Len’s Island

Disclaimer: I played entirely solo. Your results may vary (Especially in multiplayer)
EDIT: I have now tested multiplayer. Pretty decent for the most part. Open world can be very laggy when traveling together at high speeds. Otherwise, no notes. More content please!! <3
The backbones of Len's Island are fantastic. Some of the best I have ever seen on a launch game on Steam.
The movement and animations feel super clean. The hitboxes feel good. The building system is complex enough to let me design what I imagine, but simple enough that I don't need an hour long youtube tutorial to figure it out.
The quality of life in this game is THROUGH THE ROOF. Inventory system is absolutely stellar, not having to sort my inventory, dump items to fit other stuff, and never feeling like I am lacking on space after the first backpack upgrade feels great.
Cutting down a tree that hits another tree knocks that tree down in a domino effect. It is a very small thing, but tons of very clean small things like that pop up constantly while I am playing. Every few minutes I audibly say "Wow, that is slick."
Exploration feels great. Controlling the boats feels great. The little tidal slipstream currents to get around the map faster are a brilliant addition that most developers would have just never though of.
The progression feels good. I saw reviews complaining that obtaining resources was grindy and never got faster, but with the proper skill trees and gear I get a ton of materials of anything that isn't intended to be rare or valuable (the bottom 95% of materials)
You can plop down universal storage boxes anywhere you want, they connect across the world so you can trade between bases without making multiple round-trips. You can build a teleportation network to quickly access important locations or to traverse between bases quickly.
I found each activity and mini-game to be familiar but new and well done. Fishing for example is a standard in survival games, the fishing mini-game is not like any i've tried before but it was instantly intuitive and fishing is rewarding.
My major complaint, and this is a pretty big complaint:
The game has EXCELLENT backbones. A fantastic foundation. But there needs to be more to it. It felt like right about the time I got geared up and into the meat and potatoes of the game, I had already seen all that there is to see and do almost all there is to do.
I am very hopeful and excited to see what gets added to the game in future updates.
For an example: There are only like 8 different fish in the entire game. I'd like to see 50.
There are like 6 different types of islands, i'd like to see 30-40.
More gear, more dungeons, more of basically everything.
But the hard part, the core of the game, is fantastic. So I guess my recommendation is: Buy it on sale, expect maybe 10-20 hours out of it if you really milk it. Otherwise, keep an eye on this game for updates and DLC because I expect in a few years, if the devs keep updating it fairly often, this will be a top tier open world survival game on par with the popularity of games like Valheim.

It is time
This game is basically an isometric, a bit more polished, a bit more casual version of Valheim.
Hold on, don't go.
Here is why this is worth your time and money.
Valheim is a game that feels designed for a multiplayer experience.
Len's Island feels more like a personal journey than anything else even though they just added co op.
There is grind, but there is comparatively less grind. The combat system may not have a stamina system, but it does have a cooldown system with much heavier emphasis on your positioning/use of dodge/certain weapon skills. This makes the combat more risk/reward and more skill reliant.
Do you want to know what this game has that Valheim despite having more variety currently fails at? MEANINGFUL BASE RAIDS.
Every x days, there are harvest nights. If you don't go to bed to transition the night you will be attacked by LARGE WAVES of enemies making your base design actually important as they will try to chew through your walls and buildings to reach your bed and tuck you in permanently. They will also destroy your stuff (the stuff in your chests drop to the ground).
So what can you do?
Well, you can build walls, but get this, YOU CAN ACTUALLY BUILD AUTOMATED DEFENSE TOWERS THAT ACTUALLY ASSIST YOU THAT YOU ALSO NEED TO SUPPLY WITH AMMO!
That isn't all. There are resource camps strewn across the world that can give you harder to acquire resources. But you also need to defend them against raids every once in a while. I have personally not reached this experience yet, but I know they exist.
One negative however is performance optimization. You will get frame drops randomly even if you have a beefy system. This sucks during extended fights.

This Game Has Received More Love Than a Golden Retriever at a Kids’ Party

About four or five years ago, when I played Len’s Island for the first time, it had just one town and one dungeon. Since then, I’ve been watching it evolve from a part-time, almost hobby-like project into a lovingly crafted indie release.

I think everybody can get a good grasp of the game just from the screenshots, so I’ll just add some points beyond that.

- Outside of visiting dungeons, the game can be played "at your own pace" at all times. There is never a feeling of a "timer running." Even the day and night cycle doesn’t interfere with your gameplay in any annoying way.

- Every game mechanic that proved unenjoyable or even mildly annoying has been improved and polished over the years through close communication with the Discord community.

- The crafting progression is easy to follow and always gives you enough tasks to work on, without being overwhelming.

- Movement and combat are "easy to learn, tough to master." WASD + mouse feels very intuitive, and controller support was also added during development.

- Len’s Island allows you to progress however you wish.

You can start by just building, farming, and selling in peace for weeks or even months to make money a non-issue before taking on any islands, giving you an easier time over the course of the game. Or you can choose to take on tougher challenges early and focus more on improving your combat and movement skills.

I’m now at 457 hours — with more to come — on a game that cost me 20 bucks in early access. I couldn’t have asked for more.

For me, this game is a masterpiece. May you all enjoy it as I did.

Looking through the negative reviews Im not quite sure why the game is getting them. Ive seen complaints about there being no quick swap. There is. The tooltip says when you hover over an item "Quick Swap: Double Click". Also seen complaint about how short the story is. Im 8 hours in and only on act 2 of 4. If you rush the story then yes its going to be a short game but this game is a lot more than the story. Also seen complaints about it not "Reinventing the wheel" Why does every game need to reinvent the wheel? It has a lot of fun mechanics that are done fairly well. Considering its a $30 indie game Id say its pretty damn good and well worth the money. Sure there are some bugs and jank but Im having a good time with it.
TL;DR A lot of the complaints in these reviews are unfounded and game is good.

This was a pretty close no, but I'm feeling nice today, so it's a yes instead. I would ONLY buy this on sale. One guy - yes, just one singular human - made this game from scratch. For a pet project, it's quite a nice little gem, but take it for what it is - if it weren't for the combat, this would be a cozy game. The combat itself can be quite challenging only given the number of enemies that can sometimes swarm you.
I don't have anything great to say about this, but I don't have anything awful to say about it either. It really left me feeling kinda meh. But given this was one man who made this, I'd say that's an accomplishment in and of itself - and he deserves some monies for his efforts. Keep up the good fight.

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don’t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
---{ Audience }---
☑ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma
---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☑ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☑ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding
---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☑ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life
---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☑ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond
---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
---{ Replayability }---
☐ One and done
☐ Maybe after a year
☑ Worth a second run
☐ Played it 20 times and still not bored
---{ Microtransactions }---
☑ None
☐ Only cosmetics
☐ Slightly pay-to-progress
☐ Pay-to-win
☐ More shops than gameplay
☐ Casino Simulator
---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☑ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10

No weight limit, no item durability, no timed challanges, just relaxing survival game. Love it!