I am a sucker for sim games—usually, those fall under farming sims. The formula is as old as time—Grandpa left you a farm, you are out of your element, and now you have a whole new town filled with people to romance and befriend, right? In the case of One Lonely Outpost, you’re wrong, and that is what had me so excited about this new sim from Freedom Games.
One Lonely Outpost is totally a farming sim; I won’t lie. But it does things a bit differently! Instead of taking over Grandpa’s farm, you’re dumped off on an alien planet, and you need to start farming, scavenging, and exploring to see what you can send back home. You have your trusty robo-pet Qwerty by your side, your Omni-tool for everything you could need, and a ship for shelter.
“Exploring feels like it takes ages.”
Right off the bat, you’re set with missions, like finding a way to fix your broken terminal (surprise, you can’t yet, and I looked around for a way how for ages). The beginning of One Lonely Outpost is slow. Painfully slow. So slow that I had to force myself to continue. Exploring feels like it takes ages. Walking around the map can take the whole day, and trying to sort out where you are or the best route isn’t easy as the map still lacks detail.
Right now, character customization or even choice doesn’t exist, but there are a lot of promises being made for upcoming updates, which we have had several of already, so Freedom Games seems to be true to their word. Hopefully, over time there will be some more quality-of-life improvements. There isn’t a lot of guidance at the beginning, especially in terms of what you should and should not do.
Ore nodes are not infinite initially, so if you’re a hoarder like me, don’t tear them all down and collect your riches. Oh, and you can’t split stacks yet, so being able to smelt things is kind of all or nothing…or sit there until a couple are done and steal your ore back; I definitely did that.
Hoarding items is especially a no-no since it took me ages to figure out how to store things. Multiple kinds of crates use low-level materials, making me think they would hold my stuff—I had so much stuff because of all the hoarding. They are decorative, though; it was in the description; I should have known better.
“One Lonely Outpost is built for the PC-style mouse and keyboard…”
The Smart Locker is what I needed for storage—oh, and Qwerty. You can use your pet to hold things. But to make the locker, you needed Steel Ingots and Aluminum Ingots. Does the game tell you how to get them? No. Does it tell you what stone they come from? Also no. Should you smelt everything you get hoping it’s what you need? Even more, no. And as I mentioned, it takes ages to walk around the map to find what kind of rocks are in what area. For guide writers out there, One Lonely Outpost could use some!
I so badly want to play with a controller, but One Lonely Outpost is currently built for the PC-style mouse and keyboard. Fiddling with the ROG Ally was an option to get controls in place, but I decided One Lonely Outpost was better played the way they built it. I had some slight issues with movement and using tools. For instance, just clicking would be better than a click-and-hold. However, the click function allows you to move while using tools, which is a nice touch compared to other sims that require you to stay stationary. Moving freely from one rock, block of ice, or crop to the next was a breath of fresh air.
Eventually, your One Lonely Outpost has new friends move in, like Aaron, who is darn good-looking. Your character knows this, too, as you can flirt until your heart’s content. However, there are not currently any romance options. It looks like there will be some in the future, though. He was able to help fix my terminal—see? We got there! You can purchase things from him, even though he lives what feels like 100 miles away.
Honestly, most of what I can say about One Lonely Outpost is speculating what the game will look like later on rather than what it’s going well for it now. I’ve dealt with early access before, like with Disney Dreamlight Valley, but this seems like the earliest of access. Usually, you’ll be catching bugs and some quality-of-life features, but right now, it feels like we are helping them sort out the story, mechanics, and features as the game goes.
Are there bugs? Yes. I was expecting that, though. There are some areas where it is hard to click on the UI. Sometimes you have to walk away, turn around, and move back to reach what you’re trying to click on or interact with. These are pretty normal issues, and it seems Freedom Games will have more work building One Lonely Outpost’s actual gameplay than cleaning up the bugs themselves.
All that said, which I realize doesn’t sound very positive, if Freedom Games addresses the quality-of-life issues and bugs and adds a little bit of direction, filling out the UI and map with more detail, it really does stand a chance at being something special. Judging games in Early Access is challenging, and One Lonely Outpost could go either way. But with their community input and what looks like a genuine interest in feedback paired with multiple patches already and more on the horizon, I think it is safe to say that Freedom Games want One Lonely Outpost to succeed, and I think it will.
