Quick Summary
Eastshade is a cosy feel-good game that focuses on exploration and capturing breath-taking scenes in paintings. In the game, your mother has recently passed away and her last wish is for you to visit her most beloved destination – Eastshade. The journey there doesnt go without issues unfortunately, with your ship sinking just off the coast & leaving you with very few items to your name. One key item remains, however: A list of things your mother wants you to paint in her honour.
My opinion
As an artist myself, this game seemed very intriguing to me from the start. I really didn’t know what to expect in terms of different mechanics or how the paining itself would really work, but the way it was done is best, in my opinion. As you get into a shipwreck right away, you do have to craft your canvases yourself by collecting planks and cloth, which is a nice touch. I do wish that they had gotten the rest of the game more on-board with this though.
The painting itself works more like taking an in-game screenshot that then appears on the canvas you have. To capture the beautiful in-game ambience this was definitely the right move.
The characters you encounter are all talking animals which I though was simply great – they aren’t the usual animals you’d think of either. There are monkeys, owls, bears, and deer – a much welcome change from the typical cats, wolfs, etc. The voice acting for them is also excellent.
The game holds many quests, secrets, and friends to be made. My Steam game time for this at the time of writing is 35.7 hours – this includes the game being completed about 2 times & spending numerous hours achievement hunting. Would I buy it for the current price of £22.99? No, simply because there isn’t much to the game in terms of mechanics, you do end up mostly wandering around and taking in the scenery. It is essentially like a really nice digitised walk with extra steps.
Replayability
If you let enough time pass between visiting Eastshade, you can definitely replay it multiple times. It is not a game you can pick up over and over in a short time span though.
Reviews
The reviews of Eastshade are mostly positive, with a handful of soft negatives sprinkled here and there. Dylan Blereau put it best in the opening paragraph of his review of the game, I think:
“(…) While Eastshade has plenty of great ideas, the sheer amount of immersion-shattering performance problems and rough edges sully what is clearly an impressive indie title, which at its core is an exceptionally relaxing exploration game.”
I believe that if the developers had gotten more time and funding, Eastshade & any follow-up games could have been/could be simply breath-taking in every way.
Summary & Score
Despite it’s flaws, this game is still very close to my heart so I’d give it a 8/10 – it’s got issues, but overall, I’ve played way worse games that weren’t even close in terms of graphical beauty.