Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles

This Review is Dedicated to my Aunt Stephanie aka Steffi.
Steffi was just a half Year older then me and we gre up like Brother and Sister.
2 Years ago she found out she got Cancer. First, it seemed she defeated it.
But 6 Weeks ago it returned. In her last 4 Weeks i was each day in the Hospital
Holding her Hand, making her last Times easier with Memories of the Past.
7 Days ago she left this World.
This is my 400 Review, Aunt Steffi, and it is for you.
Welcome to YONDER: THE CLOUD CATCHER CHRONICLES.
At first YONDER is a really chilling Open World Adenture Game.
So what Steffi and i have had in common are beautifull Landscapes or Worlds.
In YONDERs World Gemea you will found enough of it.
Gemea is an Island hidden behind Clouds.
Absolutly Peacefull.
In the Beginning you can create your Hero and start your Journey on a Ship on your Way to Gemea.
Of course, it will happen as it must. A Storm crashes your Ship and you are stranded on the Island.
But don´t worry. This is the Beginning of a wonderfull Adventure.
What Steffi i also have had in common is Freedom. The Freedom of choices.
In YONDER you have the absolutly Freedom of your Choices.
You decide what you want to do and when you want it to do.
No Time Pressure, no Penaltys, no Stress.
Take your Time to explore wonderfull Landscapes and find a way to reveal the Secrets of the Island
with the Help of Ghosts you must find.
While you do so you are able to rise up a Farm.
Adopt Animals and take care of them. Plant what you want and enjoy the Results.
The Animals are so cute, Steffi would have also loved them.
What else you can do?
You can go fishing, join a Guild, create Items and so much more.
And the best Thing of it all, you can do it without Pressure, without Time Limit, without Penaltys.
The Game is so peacefull, there is no Combat.
You can explore the World in all tranquility.
Even if you fall from a higher Position, your Hero is taking out an Umbrella and you slowly fly to the Ground.
Unharmed.
YONDER is a totally chilling and wonderfull Game.
With nice Graphics and wonderfull Sounds and Musics.
A Place you want to go back after leaving it.
A Place you want to totally explore and find everything.
A Game my Aunt Steffi would have really loved.
Thanks for beeing my Sister for 53 Years, dear Aunt Steffi.
You are in my Heart Forever.
And thank YOU for reading.
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Yonder is an absolutely beautiful game, and I’ve been playing it since I was 7 years old. I introduced it to my cousin, and we used to play together when we were kids. Later, I switched to Xbox and couldn’t play it for years until I found out it was available on Steam. I bought it right away and have been playing it a lot since. The only issue I have with this game is that the missions aren’t very friendly for people with learning disorders or autism. For me personally, the missions often don’t make much sense and require extra, complicated steps to complete. That’s one of the reasons I’ve slowly started to stop playing. Still, it’s such a beautiful and nostalgic game for me. It’s one I’ll remember for the rest of my life because it genuinely helped shape my childhood. I love all of its mechanics. you can fish, feed animals, decorate areas, clear murk, and explore freely. It even reminds me a little of Genshin Impact. It’s a great game for kids and also perfect for relaxing after a long day. I love the sunsets and the scenery, which are absolutely stunning, and there are so many places to explore. You can customize your character, collect items and plants, mine stone, cut trees, and grow things. It’s amazing, and I highly recommend it. I just wish it had a multiplayer option.

A fun cozy open-world adventure game with farming sim elements. If your looking to pass the time and you like cozy farming sim games, check this out.

Hunt down animals, but don't kill them! Cause you can't.

At first I wasn't sure about this game.

Actually, I'm still not sure about this game.

I'm also not sure how I managed to play through the entire thing.

I'm not usually into farming sims, but Yonder is far more of an open-world adventure game than a farming sim. There is no combat whatsoever. No monsters to slay. No bandits to fight. No wildlife to accidentally turn into dinner.

Instead, it's a relaxing collectathon mixed with light farming, creature collecting, crafting, and questing. The animals you collect mostly end up helping produce resources for quests and farms.

The world of Yonder is built entirely around peace, positivity, and exploration. It's beautiful, charming, and surprisingly relaxing to wander around in.

I'm still not entirely sure why I enjoyed it as much as I did, but somehow I did.

7/10

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I thought this one was passable to begin with, and found it grow on me as I continued playing.
Lots of great features considering it is a single player crafting / exploration / relaxing game, or so they say.
First, the good things. Time plays a big role in collectables, especially the cats, but even applies to some fish and a sprite. HOURS in game fly by in the space of a minute, and all four seasons are crammed into 4 months. And as every 120 days go by, it will keep track of how many years have gone by in game. Crazy!
As such, not only are there different biomes all around the map, but different weather and conditions as well. The usual bread-and-butter weather includes sunny, overcast, rain, and storms. Each season is typically heralded by different particles blowing in the air - e.g. snow, red leaves.
The game's story revolves around collecting sprites to enhance their dispelling capability against a purple mist that bars your path, called Murk. Eventually you go somewhere and find out some answers, but you can keep playing to mop up trophies.
Environment-wise, the toons are ugly, there's just no other word for it. I didn't even care about costumes apart from some achievement. I mostly found it to be inventory clutter. The highlight for me was the sky, especially after clearing the Murk everywhere, as the clouds, sky, your unlocked constellations, moon and special effects from the story device really bring it to life, and make it worth maxxing out your settings. As for the world features... some of it, like the forests, especially with the purple/pink leaves was very nice, but far too much of the map was boring shades of green and big empty spaces.
To make these open spaces worse... is the fact there is no enemies anywhere. There's no combat. The worst thing to worry about is likely the toon's poor jumping skills and falling into water like a brick. No, actually, the worse part is the fast travel system. Ironically, I found it to be really slow, and the positions kind of confusing too, as you have to go by the face-cave artwork, and there's no guide saying where you'll come out till you test it. Fair point the ice ones and desert are obvious, but there are like 3-4 different grassy cave teleporters and it did my head in tbh. Even after using them you end up running around a LOT.
Thankfully, a better fast travel system exists in the form of an item you can craft and use to instantly teleport you, but it'll only take you to any farms you've built.
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The real problem with this game is mopping up leftover trophies. If you aren't a perfectionist, then this won't worry you, but if you miss your window for a time-sensitive pickup you will be really annoyed. I had the added problem of not realising a sprite is only available on the first day of each month (you would never figure this out without looking it up). Add to that the seasonal cats, some cats only around at dawn and dusk or midnight, a fish you'll tear your hair out over as, even if it appears, you'll never catch due to other little fish beating it to the lure, additional pointless board missions that can take a long time to do, not to mention enslaving every different type of animal...
Just like a fish out of water, it flops around a lot longer than it should.
So even though most of the game is a lot of fun, it can be a bigger time sink than you might think.

I think this game is nice! It can get a bit tedious, especially since you can bulldoze through the main story by accident, but it's cute and enjoyable.

Very much recommended as an exploration game, with a few weaknesses to note.

First off, this is a beautiful game to look at, and it excels at natural environments in particular. There's a lot to see and jog through, almost all of it breathtakinglt pretty particularly at dawn and dusk. And there we run into a hiccup- the night times- they are as long as day, and the player has to explore the terrain almost groping in the dark with just a dim lantern to help them through, and it's not nearly enough. It also sucks to be forced to see these beautiful landscapes in near dark. To be fair, the greyscales, the shadows and the night time glows do have their charm, but it shouldn't be for half the player's time.

In addition, the map is hard to decipher. some of its lines are hard to make sense of, and it's hard to be sure whether there's a way open to cross a line on the map, or if it's a hard boundary. Also, some of the structures like natural stone bridges or even the player built ones are not depicted on the map. The player can place markers on the map, but the mechanism is not very easy to use either. Some of these ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ could have been ironed out or honed by the developers but they seem to have moved on. Still, I would rate the environments and exploration at a 9/10. Had the listed ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ been improved upon, I would rate it a 10/10 for an Indie game in this respect.

Quest designs are a middling 7/10, and the billboard quests seem to be randomly generated with generic rewards, not a good design. Crafting is ok, a 7.5/10, but tends to be more of chores than meaningful rewards.

The music is as well done as the environments and adds to the exploration as the players visits the various vistas. It sits in the background, is never offensive or tiring, and is awe-inspiring at the right moments. A 9.5/ 10 for me.

On the whole, this is a game the explorers among us will love. And this is the core strength of the game, partly diluted by forcing the player to traverse the map at night-time. There's a real joy to discovering the natural world of Yonder.

The quests, crafting, farming, fishing, story are present but not as good as could be. With more than 70% of the game completed, my rating for Yonder is 8.5/ 10.