Eastshade Review

Eastshade is a brilliant little indie game I got a chance to play recently and I enjoyed it so much that I decided to write my thoughts on it after a long silence.

Eastshade is a relaxing adventure game about a painter who survived a shipwreck on the shores of a beautiful little town called Lyndow. Our protagonist is going to Eastshade not just to have a sense of adventure but to also paint his mother's most favourite locations per her request. While this is your main quest and everything is pretty much optional, in order to access some of these locations you will find yourself helping the natives, solving their problems, painting for them so on and on. But again majority of the quests are completely optional but it gives you a good sense of accomplishment to help the locals and forming a bond with them.

The developer, Eastshade Studios, also has a mini game called Leaving Lyndow which will give you a brief glance at this wonderful little port town. While Leaving Lyndow takes place in only a small part of Eastshade, Eastshade takes place on the entire Eastshade island with far more locations to discover and explore.

Leaving Lyndow is rather limited in gameplay. All you can do is walk around and talk to the few NPCs here and there. Eastshade takes it to a whole other level. As an aspiring painter we have our best friend easel with us but we also need to collect materials and craft canvases with them to be able to paint. Apart from this canvas there are many other items that can be crafted and some of them are necessary in order to access the locations we need to paint our mother's favourite locations.

Eastshade is heavily based on visuals, you are a painter after all. The game also has a big emphasis on tea culture. There are many different teas you can make or purchase in the game. Some of these teas actually do have a function such as allowing you to fast travel between areas you previously discovered. However majority of the teas are for visuals only, think of them as filters that exist on photo editing apps. They change the colours and add certain effects to your surroundings while the tea is active. You can drink water to remove the effects of a tea. While I love tea in real life, surprisingly this was something I didn't use a lot since I am not a fan of filters or any extra effects. I prefer pure natural colours.

I mentioned that the entire game is about a painter painting specific locations for his mother. So how do we paint really? In order to paint you need inspiration. To get inspiration you can read new books, discover new locations and sit in hot springs. Every time you paint, you lose a chunk of your inspiration. Technically there is an infinite source of inspiration as you also get it every time you hear an NPC sing or tell a story regardless of whether you did that before so don't be afraid of running out of inspiration for good. 

The paint related quests are quite simple. Does the NPC want the picture of a tree? You can pick any tree you want. Is it a windmill? There are plenty, it doesn't matter which one. Certain paint contracts have very specific requirements like painting the interior of a very specific cave located in a very specific place or an owl but these are somewhat rare. 

Eastshade is a big island consisting of smaller islands. Some of these islands have a bridge you can cross to access but the others will need you to craft a raft or a boat to cross across streams or lakes since you can't swim. In order to find schematics for these you will need to do quests for the NPCs. Apart from mandatory equipment, you can also craft or purchase optional tools that will help you with your journey.

Speaking of optional tools you can purchase let's expand upon this a little bit. Especially the beautiful city Nava comes with a wide variety of selections. Coat should be your priority since it allows you to explore at night when it's too cold. After this I strongly suggest investing in a bike. Yes you need to get off it every single time you want to pick up an item or to save the game but it significantly boosts your speed and it is much faster than your sprint speed. You can also buy a zip line that will help you travel across rope lines around Eastshade. If you find yourself lacking in gallowstones, which is the currency, invest in a fishing line and start fishing! There really is so much to do in this game.

Resources are basically infinite and most craftable material like flowers, feathers and sticks etc respawns after a few days so you can paint as much as you want without any worries. Certain craftable materials like fabric for an easel can be bought from a vendor with gallowstones. Gallowstones can be farmed infinitely so you can't run out of it for good either.

I truly loved this little gem but this doesn't mean I don't have my criticisms. One of the game design choices I don't agree with in Eastshade is that there is the element of cold at night. You have about 10 seconds of wandering around at night before you are automatically taken to the nearest inn where you can sleep to pass the time. 

There are a few ways to battle the cold. First and foremost you need to buy a coat from the nearby city called Nava as soon as you can, but you will only get there somewhere mid game as you need to do a lot of quests to be granted access to the city. Another way is to buy Meadowspice Mead from the inn in Lyndow which gives you protection from the cold for a limited time. You can also craft a tent which then you can use to place on any appropriate location and rest inside even when you are out in the cold. You don't need to craft multiple tents, you can craft one, use it, then pack it up again to reuse later. Again fear not, cold doesn't actually kill you. You just spawn at the closest inn.

One other criticism I've got is that the game only has one save slot. You have only one manual save and an auto save. There aren't choices in the game but it still would have been nice to have at least 3-4 manual save slots. A few bugs in the game made me panic about my save being corrupted but thankfully a restart of the game fixed the one specific very scary bug I ran into. I also wasn't happy with the map not disclosing my own location. You can only see the overall map and the locations you discovered that are available for fast travel. 

To sum up Eastshade is a wonderfully crafted beautiful game about painting and drinking tea with many areas to explore, interesting locals to meet, fun quests to complete and to just take in the stunning sights around you and enjoy yourself. There is no death, no damage, no quest failures. It's pure heaven for someone who simply wants a joyful casual experience as a refuge from whatever you want to escape.