As far as the eye – review

The guys at Unexpected Studio are full of ideas and eager to experiment. With As Far As The Eye, they have created a new hybrid game that combines different genres: city builder, RPG and roguelike. Making such a mix is ​​not easy, but they got a good result. It’s just a pity that due to the inexperience of the young team, there are still some problems to solve in the version that has arrived on PlayStation 4. Discover all the lights and shadows of this game in our review!

You are the only one who can save them

The world of As Far As The Eye is a world in constant destruction and rebuilding, an endless loop of death and rebirth, which only ends when you get to The Eye (the eye in Italian). Our task will be precisely to lead a small tribe on the difficult journey to safety, which can only be achieved in this place. To do this we need a lot of resources, useful for overcoming the obstacles that stand between us and The Eye. We will therefore have to build small settlements that will allow us to exploit the environment and obtain the materials necessary to move to a new part of the map, the part that is getting closer and closer to our destination.

But be careful because we won’t be able to hang around for long and we will have to optimize our trading as best we can to avoid a huge wave hitting us. In fact, the durability in each scenario has a limited time: exceed it and your pupils (students) will be submerged in water and will inevitably perish. But nature is our friend-enemy, in fact, harmful climate events can happen even before the wave arrives, for example, lightning can strike the forests from which we get wood or a small flood can flood the quarry, and so on. These events will depend not only on chance, but also on how we treat the natural resources of the world of As Far As The Eye. The more greedy we are, the sooner nature will present us with the bill.

Young but enterprising

Our students will do exactly what we tell them to do and as they work they will become more and more experts. It is up to us to decide how to evolve them so that they can specialize in specific professions. This will improve their productivity: for example, a lumberjack will be more efficient at harvesting wood than a miner. At the beginning of the game, our pupils will be fully malleable, but elements that have already begun their training may appear later. It will therefore be more convenient to support it than to try to change it.

Every move in As Far As The Eye has to be well thought out and thought through. The passage of time announcing the anomalous wave will soon be felt. Among the many detours, deciding which route to take to reach The Eye will be very important. By taking into account the necessary resources, we can plan both their collection and the movements to be carried out. The campaign is actually a long tutorial to learn how to play. It will be helpful to familiarize yourself with the otherwise difficult to understand and very unintuitive mechanics. Free play becomes the real challenge of the title! Procedurally creating different environments on each reboot also adds decent replay value to the whole thing.

A management software on console, always the same problems …

The graphics of this game are special and very inspired, the soft pastel colors contrast with the ever-present imminent death. However, it is a pity that the details are a bit lost and that it is not always easy to grasp them in the overview. Unexpected Studio thought and created As Far As The Eye for PC, that’s pretty obvious. The good success of that version prompted the development studio to switch to the console. On the technical side, a good job was done, the frame rate was even constant and we did not find any obvious bugs or problems. However, the flaws are felt in the mapping of the commands and some operational shortcomings. For example, the image has to shift and zoom with the analog sticks and this is not very intuitive and very uncomfortable. More than once we found ourselves framing an area that was completely different from what we wanted.

The lettering could have been better too, perhaps with an optional magnification for the poor old tired eyes of those trying to read the sheer amount of text present. In addition, we must warn you that there is no localization in Italian and even those who have a really good command of the English language may have difficulties understanding it. The language is very poetic and courtly, which results in a special and pleasant atmosphere. But if you don’t know how to say in English “whisper in your pupil’s ear to move his limbs in the area lapped by brackish water”, you may be a little surprised.

Trophically, the tidal wave won’t hit you that hard

As Far As The Eye shouldn’t be hard to get platinum, in fact the requests are quite easy even if they are numerous. The sixty-eight trophies on the list are obtained by completing the five chapters of the campaign and unlocking all of the students’ specializations. In practice, you will have to play a few games and be careful to diversify the different upgrades and so you should have a new platinum to show to your friends.