I agree with some of the comments that the learning curve was a little steep at times. I wished I had this game printed out because I kept having to scroll up and down and try to re-find different charts; but that's a personal preference for me of physical vs. digital. Once I got into it, though, I became really attached to my old, cranky forest dweller named Dev. Xe ended pretty tragically, weakening early in the game and eventually dying to an attack by a zombie/mangrove mutation that was once xir favorite tree in the first phase of autumn. But I feel like the difficulty and the way Dev was just barely hanging on for so much of the game heightened my emotional investment.

I think I'm going to pick the game up next time where Dev left off but from another character.

Hi. 

So I enjoyed the game, but I found a few things that need more explanation. For example, my character had Aura, which reads "You are immune to enemy Aura." Sounds good, but then when I had an encounter that featured Aura the only description reads "All Animal, Humanoid, and Fey have a -1 when making an Opposed roll against you." 

So If I am immune to Aura that implies that I am immune to them having a -1 penalty, which means my special ability actually negates an advantage. 

Later, I had a Mutated Insect Swarm encounter. Mutated reads "Mutated creatures combine their stats and characteristics with another creature from their respective table. This is determined by rolling one six-sided die and consulting the current Season Table (treat the result as an Ace-6 result in the Spades column). If you roll an event or a duplicate creature, go to the nearest non-event or duplicate entry on the table." 

I rolled (and had to look under Clubs, not Spades, which is an error) and wound up combining with a Dream Eater. There is no explanation of how to combine the stats and abilities, so I just added them together. 

Insect Swarm has Health 3, Strength -1, Spirit 0, Survival 3, and Stealth -3. Dream Eater has Health 1, Strength -3, Spirit 2, Survival 0, and Stealth 0.

Adding them together I ended up with a Dream Insect Swarm that had Health 4, Strength -4, Spirit 2, Survival 3, and Stealth -3

Since it was a Survival challenge, it completely destroyed me. I accepted that, though I am not sure if it was correct given the lack of explanation for combining stats.

Aside from that bit of frustration, nice game.

I had a lot of fun with this. The learning curve at the beginning was a bit steep, but pnce you figured out the rules it all makes sense and easy to pick up again even after a pause.

The game is quite deadly, so be aware of that (then again it's a solo rpg, so you could always fudge a die or two if you've grown to attached to a character ;), which helps convey the darker, but never depressing tone. Generally the athmosphre really comes across well, which is the biggest pro of this game in my opinion.

The events are all creative, ranging from realustic to fanciful. I liked the "mutations" best as they provided unique opportunuties, both gameplay and storytelling wise.

Once you've done all the "special" events, however there isn't as much replay value (at least there wasn't for me), because the normal events can feel quite mundane compared to them. The expansion may fix that, so I will definitely checking that out.

The availability of food broke the immersion a little, since in the game the opportunities to gather food are plenty in spring and grow rarer as the year advances, however in real life it's almost the other way around with food growing more plenty throughout the year (until winter that is). I'm aware that the intention was to make the game more challenging as the year progresses, but perhaps starting out with more food at character creation might be another way to achieve that.

Would definutely reccommend this game for a lonely afternoon or night, just maje sure to read the rules thoroughly before you start journaling.

Hi!

Is this supposed to be claimable like the expansion or just download only?

So, as promised on the forum, I've been reading the PDF. Since ratings don't trigger a notification, I'll repeat here what mine says. I find the game complicated, hard, and not my idea of fun, but unusual and instructive. Worth reading just to get an idea of how different a tabletop RPG can be, But if I'm going to roleplay all by myself, might as well write a story. On a subject I care about for a change. Thanks for telling me about it though!

played the second year with the version 2.0 too.

Well... I told you on the game-jam page that the first year was pretty quiet. That was different in the second year: my character Peter died in fall, after 3 raining seasons, a ill-chosen berry, and two bad encouters (a dangerous sentient fungus + a poisonous mutated wolf group). I guess three seasons of being sick wasn't a cool experience. As well astwo encounters needing to use strength (his -1 stat skill)

Thanks for this game! Cool game, but deadly game: Peter was dreaming about escaping the forest... but didn't know how to. Maybe there's no way out anyway.