Genre: Casual farming co-op adventure
Developer: FRAME BREAK, Amplifier Studios
Publisher: FRAME BREAK, Amplifier Studios
Release Date: March 19th, 2024
Edited by AlexKnight2005
Lightyear Frontier is a farming exploration game from the minds of Frame Break and Amplifier Studios. It takes place in a fictional alien world in the far reaches of space. You left your comfort for whatever reasons, stealing a mech from an abandoned frontier project and coming to this faraway place. It’s mostly a typical intro story and reason for being where you are in a farming sim. It is an overused trope, but for this, it’s better than, hey, your blank family member died and left you this run-down piece of crap. So that’s a point in the win column for the game so far. The second is using a Mech to farm, build, and explore.
After the crash landing, you must find your mech and its parts. Once you have done so, you are given a few intro quests to get your start in the game. There are several areas to explore, each with its own resources and secrets to find. To access some of the area’s resources, you will have to clean out noxious weeds or slimes. Upon doing so, the resources will spawn the next day. Side note: they added an interesting mechanic to how resources respawn here. In each area, there are critter nests that you can feed. If you feed up to three nests in that area, the maximum amount of resources respawn the following day.
It solves similar games’ finite resource issues, restricting the freedom of what you craft and build. It especially helps in multiplayer, where the only progress that is not shared is the mech upgrades. That being said, you can have up to four people in multiplayer, which helps a lot because you can divide up tasks that need doing, which is a lot towards the end game. All other mechanics are standard for this type of game. The building is straightforward, as is the item crafting and farming.
There also are events that happen randomly at your base, one of which is where these globules of goo appear in the air, and if you dont clear them out, they eventually turn into slime, which plops down on the ground, and if they land on crops, it deletes them. As far as settings go, there are your typical settings, except that there are no accessibility settings at all. I was expecting, at minimum, a colorblind mode, but there is not one. That being said, though, the graphics are very colorful and vibrant. I love how they pop and are easy on the eyes simultaneously. The water animation of bodies of water would use a slight touch-up, but it is still well done. The music is very relaxing and gives the game a chill vibe, which is what you want in a game like this. Sound effects are ok as well. Surprisingly, for an early-access game, I ran into no bugs at all. I can’t wait to see what they add to the game going towards their 1.0 release.
