Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles review

Reviewed on: Xbox One

Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles is a small great adventure that deserves to be tried!

It all begins with a ship voyage, interrupted by a very strong storm, in which lightning strikes it and ends up throwing your ship onto an island. After a brief conversation with a mysterious woman who seems to be some kind of entity, the character discovers they are on an unbelievable island.

Gemea, an island with beautiful plains, friendly memories, and a few secrets to discover. It will remind you of many games from the past, one of them “The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker”.

Basically Yonder is a farm management RPG with a few activities. It can also be everything you want, since there is little chaos in this realm, just a few villages with “evil upon them” that it’s up to you to save.

The player character has the incredibly rare ability to see and interact with special beings called sprites and is therefore tasked with collecting them and using them to eliminate the Murk and save Gemea, and that is practically the whole story of the game.

The lack of story also applies to NPCs and side quests. Because at times it comes down to just picking up X quantity of items and bringing them back; they don’t even tell you the reason for collecting those items.

GAMEPLAY

Yonder makes up for this lack of story by giving players an immense amount of things to do. The game’s appeal lies in the way you can tend to your farms, walking the lands, gathering resources, crafting various items, planting trees, fishing and doing everything you imagine.

The game has no battle system, since you have no enemies in the game, and you also don’t die, unless you fall into the water. In that case, you’ll go back to seconds before it happened. For the rest, the controls are simple and easy to adapt to.

You have a compass that, with a beam of light, easily shows you the location of your objective, and more than enough sprites to deal with the hardest areas. There are fast travel methods, but the world isn’t as gigantic as big “AAA” games, you can quickly walk to your objective.

The item crafting system seems very simple, but it only seems so. All the items in the game are used for crafting, nothing is useless. These resources can be used for many things, such as building bridges, and more advanced things, like cattle pens, which generally require multiple layers of crafting. Players can also get some materials through barter-style trading, and there is a light economic feature, as some villages will value certain things.

There are several farms that can be built to provide even more resources, with players able to plant trees as well as adopt animals, creating and placing the necessary items. The farms don’t require much care, just an occasional visit to collect the rewards and cleaning; you can also hire someone to take care of your farm, just by giving food.

The game also has a hundred collectibles, such as finding all the cats, planting X number of trees and so on. The methods for building or collecting different objects are basically the same. However, there is more than enough to keep players engaged throughout the main campaign, which should last about fifteen hours on average.

AUDIOVISUAL

Yonder will please your eyes a lot; the game has beautiful art. Every setting gives you a very pleasant and beautiful view. Well-measured glows, lights and colors make the whole game more relaxing.

The game’s sound isn’t from big productions, but it doesn’t disappoint; it has good sound effects and nothing disturbing. The music does a great job matching the environments, and there are strong audio effects everywhere, such as when chopping down trees and when it starts to rain.

CONCLUSION

Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles is a game that will please you and help you relax. You don’t need to be a pro player in battles, just have the patience to play and collect items to progress in your game. If you’re looking for a game to lose yourself in and aren’t too worried about a great story, then you definitely have to try Yonder.

Fun: 7
Audiovisual: 8
Gameplay: 8

Version used for the review was for Xbox One