Ooblets Review

After releasing in Early Access on The Epic Game's Store back in 2020 and going through controversy, Ooblets has finally made its way to Steam. With colourful graphics, adorable pets, and some of my favourite genres mixed in, it didn't take any begging from anyone for me to pick it up to review.

After creating your character, you get a small introduction to your life story. The playable character hasn't been happy with their life, so they've decided to move to Badgetown, lured in by the promise of cute little Ooblets. And who could blame them? They're adorable. 

Once the short intro is done, we get to jump straight into the combat tutorial, as Ooblets doesn't work quite like the other creature collector titles do. In it, battles are won through dance-offs, and unlike the others in the genre, fights don't happen through turn-based fighting but instead via cards. The last obvious difference from the genre is that, since there's no fighting and no creature faints, instead of taking home the Ooblet you battle, you get a seed from them that you can then nurture in your farm. 

Once the little guys blossom, they can join your team, stay back helping on the farm, or even go to the Wildlands (which is just an area where you can store Ooblets and get rewards for quests), but one thing you'll need to do for all of them is scan and 3D print them; if you do, you'll get a small reward of money and even the possibility of decorating with their figurines. This was one of my favourite aspects, as it was awesome to see the cases slowly fill up with all kinds of cute little guys, and it really put into perspective my progress.

When you're not busy at the farm or having dance-offs, you can stroll through the town to forage items, chat with the townsfolk, and complete missions that can range from silly things like helping someone find their lost Ooblet to giving the mayor a hand in re-opening a building and unlocking a new mechanic. Unfortunately, however, there aren't many good things I can say about any of these mechanics, and I'll explain each one separately to be more concise.

Starting off with the most obvious part, that most people got the game for — the Ooblets themselves. Although there's a nice variety to collect, including three rarities for each creature, it's almost impossible to get them through the sheer amount of grinding you have to do to get just one, and when you do, it feels kind of pointless for a variety of reasons. Although you can definitely give them adorable outfits, when it comes to the actual dance-offs and them doing anything around the farm, it's pretty bland. Again, I will split it into two parts so it doesn't get convoluted, beginning with combat.

Whilst it was originally meant to play like Pokémon, the developers adapted a card-battling system instead, which I was genuinely quite excited about because I'm such a fan of the genre, despite not having played too many titles because I usually get so invested when I do. Unfortunately, nothing I love about deck-builders and card battlers is present in the game except the cards themselves, as it's mostly based on luck and feels mindless and dull. Each round, you get everything you would usually get: a depletable source, a handful of cards to choose from, and buffs/debuffs. Unfortunately, however, there's no strategy to be had since every time the turn changes, you lose your entire hand and start fresh, denying any possibility of planning ahead by saving some cards tactically or mixing and matching moves. This meant that it felt absolutely pointless to try to use any cards that would add Hype (which was never explained in-game, but I believe just empowers the Ooblets) or debuff the enemy because you didn't know if you could capitalise on it later, so I just wound up spamming the same old cards that gave me raw points. Despite the RNG elements, the combat is so easy that I never lost a dance-off.

Thanks to the lack of strategy, it felt useless to bother changing to other Ooblets or levelling them up because some of them had oddly tactical cards (with tons of debuffs or buffs), making them more of a hassle to have in the team. And whenever I did find one I really wanted, I would eventually give up because every time you want to have a dance-off, you need to give the creatures what they want. It's like if in Pokémon, you gave them a snack instead of throwing a ball at them, and although in theory that sounds adorable, it highlighted another huge flaw in the game: it is excessively grindy.

Due to my obsession with farming and life sims, I have learned a thing or two about what to hoard and when to expect a snowballing point. This is why, when I began my journey in Ooblets, I made sure to save a quantity of what I foraged for a rainy day; this only became more necessary as I realised that 90% of the time you spend in-game is completing missions that revolve around you giving in items the NPCs demand to progress, and although this is what you usually do in games, this time around, it felt downright punishing. It didn't matter how much or how little I hoarded, I never seemed to have enough to do both fun things and chores. To put it lightly, I hit 20 hours, and I still hadn't bought anything I could deem as "fun" — all the clothing items and furniture I did own were because of the currently live Halloween event. Had it not been for that, I would have had absolutely nothing. All of my funds had been sunk into trying to keep up with the requests of the missions, which were necessary for me to go to new areas and tame new Ooblets.

This demand not only stopped me from being able to enjoy decorating my house and character but also stopped me in my tracks to get every Ooblet I met. A lot of them require you to give them food, which needs certain materials made from crops that you can farm... for an egregious price. To put it into perspective, to get 20 seeds of one of the most — if not the most — necessary materials you need 640 in-game currency (meaning you pay a whopping 32 per unit), and you can only sell those at 10 per unit, and even while having an active request for them on the board, I could sell them for 260 only. To make matters even worse, you get one per crop planted, meaning what you plant is what you get — no extra yield. And last but not least, they take three whole days to grow, which, although it doesn't sound too bad, each one takes 20 minutes in real life, and there's no way to skip time. As for the Ooblets, I had some in the Oobcoop, but I really didn't see them do much, no matter how much I upgraded it.

Another reason why 20-minute days are a bit of a pain is because of how often I found myself without energy, which is painfully necessary if you want to get anything done. As I said before, I know a thing or two about farming games, so I knew to grind for the sprinklers as fast as I could to save myself some time, but even then, I never seemed to have enough leftover energy. I would have to nap up to twice per day to be able to get things done because paying for coffee was just out of the question, and making it even worse. 

The conclusion of all of these issues made the pacing incredibly unpleasant, and I felt like all I did was go from chore to chore to chore with little to no reward. I couldn't get new Ooblets because I didn't have the food they wanted, but I couldn't buy the crops or items necessary because I didn't have money, and when I did have money, it left no room for me to use it on anything outside of more grinding because I also needed it to complete missions. Obviously, as you play, you unlock new mechanics — such as a shop owned by you — but bear in mind I unlocked it past 15 hours despite only saving up for missions and Ooblets; I hadn't spent a single dime on anything else by that point.

I know it might sound dramatic, but keep in mind that the second upgrade for the bag was 300 gummies, and it only gave me two measly spaces more, completely demoralising me when I saw the next level cost 500. This, paired up with the other painful expenses (seriously, the seed prices are nightmare-inducing), made using 210 gummies on just a couch or a whopping 2,000 for the bigger house just too damn painful. I am not joking when I say I bought nothing else aside from necessary items — 15 hours in and no furniture? I can't imagine anything more dull.

That summarises the issues with Ooblets, the combat, and the farm, but there isn't much more fun to be had outside of these aspects of the game. In fact, I got so sucked into grinding to help the town that I actually forgot that there was battling, too, because everything else aside from the Ooblets is so demanding. 

Unfortunately, the NPCs in the game are one-dimensional and dull — they have no personality aside from the clichés they encompass. Whether it's Bazil always being snarky and greedy, the mayor always being bubbly and helpful, or Arah talking about spells and the occult — they don't have much to themselves outside of that. While you do get some cool rewards for talking to them constantly, like accessories and recipes, there's not much else to it. There's no special scene you can have for reaching a certain friendship level or any useful perks and considering their dialogue feels uninspired and confusing thanks to the, unfortunately, excessive forced comedy through silly words, it doesn't feel worth actually reading what they say while you do the daily roundabout for Friendship XP. 

As you accomplish things throughout the game, you'll get wishies, a different currency that you can use to unlock perks — this can range anything from additional Ooblets to expanding one of the stores — and although I thought it was going to be a fun idea, it turned out to also be quite stressful. Not only did I have to figure out how it all worked, completely missing the daily quests for hours because I didn't see them, but I then went straight into the same issue as with gummies — I spent and spent and spent wishies on necessary perks, like getting new Ooblets and important upgrades, and by the time I was through with the grinding and could use them to expand shops, I didn't care for it anymore. It had been hours, and I was pretty burnt out.

Lastly, the other mechanics you unlock throughout the game are riddled with needless limitations (for example, I really do not see the point in giving us such a punishing energy system for running or making the seed prices so painfully high) or just feel dull and mundane. There's not much else to say about them, as they didn't really add much of anything aside from making you feel dissatisfied after all the grinding for them.

Truth be told, I just didn't have fun with Ooblets at all. No matter what I did or where I went, the game felt like it was a half-thought — everything felt superficial and okay at best. There were no tutorials, the combat system feels rushed and shallow, collecting Ooblets is more of a chore than it should be, there's no reason to talk to NPCs... I could just go on endlessly. The only reason anyone will get 10 hours off the game is because of the slow pace made to bloat playtime.