If you took Animal Crossing, mixed it with Harvest Moon and added a pinch of toon Link from the Legend of Zelda, you’d get Prideful Sloth Games’ upcoming title, Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles. This charmingly adorable, open world adventure game drops on the enormous island of Gemea where they’ve been summoned to rid the island of a mysterious smog-like pollution known as The Murk.
While Yonder does initially provide you with a narrative for gameplay sake, once the game begins it’s pretty much up to you how you’d like to play, which is what I found most appealing. Yonder features no actual combat. In fact, you are never really in any peril at all during the game. Even if you fall from a great height, your character automatically whips out cute little umbrella and gently floats to the ground like Mary Poppins. Instead of conflict, the fun of Yonder is found in NPC interaction, crafting, building and exploring the eight unique environments found across the surprisingly large island.
Yonder is clearly not for everyone. If you’d rather be shooting bad guys and stabbing monsters, you may want to take a pass on Yonder, but honestly, you’d be doing yourself a disservice. Like Animal Crossing, Yonder is less like a traditional, structured game experience and more like a delightful place to visit and experience at your own pace, be it on your own, or with kids.
Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles is slated for release on PC and PS4 this July with the potential for more platforms down the road. For more information on the the denizens of Gemea, building a farm, or if you’d simply like to watch me glide on the breeze with my umbrella, check out our interview with Cheryl Vance, Co-Founder of Prideful Sloth, recorded LIVE on the show floor of PAX East 2017.