I previously reviewed WhyNot? several years ago. Surprisingly, the developers responded to my feedback, and I'm happy to report that some of my complaints have been resolved.
Which is why it's hard for me say this: I still don't think I'd recommend the game to new players.
WhyNot?'s early game suffers heavily from the baggage Minetest Game brings with it: Heavy elements of RNG due to the biome-specific resources, numerous empty caves, and deep ores lacking interesting content between you and them. This leads to an awkward feeling where the game takes off quickly with its early guidance, then the pacing hits a wall as you slowly gather materials and try to find a cave that doesn't end immediately. After around 2 1/2 hours, I found myself still stuck with stone tools and without having made a meaningful step forward in progression since the 30 minute mark. Someone with more skill or dedication might've gotten to the good stuff, but frankly I found the early game too slow and boring to continue with.
Having said this, it's not an impossible barrier to overcome. I believe the folks behind this game can improve it in time: they've shown the willingness and ability to fix issues in the past, and I wish them the best of luck.
There's a longer video showing my impressions here, and an accompanying blog post here. Viewers may find the additional context useful when deciding whether to heed my words.
I previously reviewed WhyNot? several years ago. Surprisingly, the developers responded to my feedback, and I'm happy to report that some of my complaints have been resolved.
Which is why it's hard for me say this: I still don't think I'd recommend the game to new players.
WhyNot?'s early game suffers heavily from the baggage Minetest Game brings with it: Heavy elements of RNG due to the biome-specific resources, numerous empty caves, and deep ores lacking interesting content between you and them. This leads to an awkward feeling where the game takes off quickly with its early guidance, then the pacing hits a wall as you slowly gather materials and try to find a cave that doesn't end immediately. After around 2 1/2 hours, I found myself still stuck with stone tools and without having made a meaningful step forward in progression since the 30 minute mark. Someone with more skill or dedication might've gotten to the good stuff, but frankly I found the early game too slow and boring to continue with.
Having said this, it's not an impossible barrier to overcome. I believe the folks behind this game can improve it in time: they've shown the willingness and ability to fix issues in the past, and I wish them the best of luck.
There's a longer video showing my impressions here, and an accompanying blog post here. Viewers may find the additional context useful when deciding whether to heed my words.
Thank you for the review. It got me thinking. I created new issue on github for discussions for that: https://github.com/minetest-whynot/whynot-game/issues/60
you gotta be the most bitter person on this platform cause all you do is leave negative reviews the size of essays on things that dont even deserve it
We've addressed several of ths concerns on this issue. I'd love to see a re-assessment - dacmot worked very hard on the custom Whynot awards.
This comes at a good time, since I happen to have resumed messing around with MT a couple weeks ago. I'll give it a look soon and update my review.
So I played it, wrote up a new review, hit the character limit, said "well, I'll rewrite it later", and then promptly forgot for 9 months :D
I'll see if I can re-review properly sometime this summer.