As Far As The Eye is a strategy game about working together and sustainability, tasking players with harvesting the resources they need without stripping the world bare.
When you think of a strategy game, your general first thought is you versus an enemy. In the case of this game, your enemies are not as simple as bandits and rival factions. Using a collectivist mindset will help you immerse yourself in the lives of some curious, shape-shifting creatures – creatures that are sure to charm you.
In this doomed world, a wave is slowly swallowing up all of the lands and all of the inhabitants. The inhabitants (called Pupils) must make a pilgrimage to the Eye. This is not an unfamiliar situation, as the wave swallows the land every once in a while. It is up to the Pupils to make it to the Eye and share all they have learned in this cycle with a grand party and feast.
Pupils are interesting life forms that shift into various types of critters to take on the form that best suits the task they are assigned to. They act like the eye’s pupil, dilating and contracting in response to light, but instead change to best suit whatever job you give them. With each task comes a new form – red pandas are gatherers, birds are builders, etc. If you should want to assign a specific Pupil to a task, you may want to think about building a specialized building to help them evolve and gain stronger bonuses based on the form you gave them.
When you begin your journey, you will be atop a caravan, which is a large creature that transports you. You will have the option to roam the area or halt (as it is called) to find a suitable place to settle (best to find one with the resources you need to acquire fast). Once settled, you will have a certain amount of turns to procure everything you need before you have to get moving again. You may have an option to choose two different halts, in which case you may want to make sure the biome is not to your disadvantage (like one that may not have a lot of food or a resource you’ll need later).
Traversing a halt isn’t tricky. Each pupil has a certain amount of MP which is consumed by moving across hexes. Some hexes with difficult terrain require more finesse and may take a couple of turns to get past. With each turn, your MP will be restored and an amount of food will be consumed – a resource you DO NOT want to be without. Each Pupil will consume 6 food items at the end of each turn, and if you don’t have enough, you will suffer HP loss. It doesn’t take a lot to lose your food. Luckily, there are lots of different ways to collect, depending on the halt you have landed in. You can collect pepkins (an in-game food item) easily and consume them raw, or seek higher nourishment with fish or game – but these require specialty buildings.
All of these threats of starvation and a looming catastrophe may have your inner strategist ready to go and pluck every resource from the land… But you would be causing way more damage with this mindset. As Far As The Eye employs an extremely interesting mechanic that reinforces that these tribes are striving for a better civilization. If you strip a Halt of every resource possible and take more than you need, you will bring the fury of nature down on you. When you suffer random events, you will experience them with much higher severity due to your greed. After all, you are not the only tribe making your way to the Eye – you want to leave resources to make the journey easier for tribes that come after you. It’s even possible to find Pupils who were left behind on your journey and, if you care for them, your score will be bolstered. It’s not all just about your survival here.
As Far As The Eye is one of the most interesting, charming, and intriguing strategy games I’ve played in a long time. I love the shape-shifting creatures that have a strong sense of aiding one another, as well as the pursuit of knowledge. It drew me in with its beautiful design and colors and kept me with its well-thought-out narrative and mechanics.
As Far As The Eye is available now on Steam.
About The Author
Seems like a really good idea. Provided it doesn’t turn into one of those games where one person dictates what everyone else should do.