Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles

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

Check out my curated list of games

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.

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.
________________
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.

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.

I am really enjoying The Cloud Catcher Chronicles. Quests, Pets, Farms, Resource mining, Hoarding, Oh My! If you like a relaxed, peaceful, go at your own pace, open world style game you should pick this up.

This is one the best chill-games that exist. Imagine Zelda but without any stresses. Imagine exploring a beautifully crafted world you can explore and find treasures. This is that game.

It definitely took me a minute to get used to everything but I ended up really enjoying this game. There was several elements that are super fun, (like collecting the cats, sprites, and animals, the fishing was different than any other game but I enjoyed it) and it was actually very ADHD friendly in my opinion, but there were a few annoyances but not enough to dislike the game (fast travel points were far from important areas, the farms could have been more useful, and certain mechanics bothered me)
All in all though this game was very fun and cozy and I really enjoyed it.