What REALLY Happened To Orange Season?

[@Ninja40K]

It was a passionate project that was supposed to be a fantasy farm game with different races, combat, magic, and a vast world similar to Sunhaven, all developed by a single dev. Initially, it received regular updates, but the updates slowed to just one or two per year as time passed. Eventually, the developer sold it to a publisher, who removed many elements, including the fantasy aspects, and changed the map to a nonsensical circular layout. There were no updates for years, but suddenly, it was released on all platforms. Stay away, if you want a good fantasy farm game then play Rune Factory, Kynseed, Sunhaven, Field of Mistria, Harvestella.

[@amandabernard8179]

I'm trying to play harvestella but it won't let me get past the first cutscene on steam deck

[@banana-bunny]

DO NOT play harvestella lmbo

[@ingvarsuigin609]

Oh, so it started as "More high-fantasy stardew valley" (which was also developed by a single dev) but ended up just a "stardew valley alpha with bigger pixel-art"

[@Gleamiarts]

​@@ingvarsuigin609afaik it came out before stardew

[@bellamiso]

I wouldn't recommend Sunhaven,. the devs have shown a lot of incompetence and outright greed and as much as the game is good it does not measure to buying into their bs

[@66sinead]

I had about 55 hours in the game. I started playing when it first came out in early access. The Dev was really cool. He would answer and fix things. Then the game seemed to go dead. It was bought by a new team, and frankly, all their "improvements" made the game worse. I have been putting off reloading it to see if it got better with leaving EA. Reading the reviews makes me think, nope. I removed my earlier positive review from when it first came out. Very sad.

[@puan1211]

From what I could tell there wasn’t even an update on release day. All that happened was them saying it’s out of EA

[@puan1211]

I miss the old game Being able to befriend and bring home animals (such as cats, dogs, turles, and monkeys) The strange forest with seasonal areas and puzzles The kitchenware salesman that would just randomly turn up at your house The cloud spots which would give you golden oranges if you gave it the right item There were so many cool little things that has just been completely taken away 😢

[@TaoScribble]

Going off the footage, I'm guessing the days just "randomly started over" because your health ran out. That's what it looks like, anyway. But...why are there no visual cues? No signs of straining, like sweat or the character looking tired? Or why isn't there a tutorial or message that pops up when it happens? That's just so bizarre.

[@CeliriaRose]

As someone who used to hang out on the Orange Season discord and chatted with Hudell on numerous occaisions it is so depressing seeing what became of the game. Hudell might not have been the fastest developer but he was passionate and made sure to communicate and listen to feedback. Compare that to the new devs who released version .11 a year ago followed by a small patch a month ago and then full release in this buggy blatantly unfinished state and it’s just sickening to look at. I don’t know if Hudell was pushed out after Sodesco got involved or if he had some personal reasons for stepping down but either way I can’t imagine he is thrilled seeing what became of the game he had spent so long working on.

[@galactirabbit]

Considering the game has no player animations for anything (but holding an item) I imagine maybe the sudden blackout to the next day was supposed to be the player running out of energy but the game just deciding not to tell you and not showing you screens for running out of energy? idk this game is such a mess asdadsadsd

[@aoihitori]

It's always a redflag whenever the original passionate creator been taken out of the production. And this time the game was sold to publisher which never be a good sign.

[@daasbuffy]

It sounds to me as thought the solo dev did this for a passion project but lost their passion for it and was sold to a publisher and given to a dev team who didn't have the source code or couldn't make heads or tails of an amateur's spaghetti code and the publisher just got fed up and lost patience and just shoved it out the door.

[@chattychatotchannel]

Reactivity in a game is important because it makes the players feel in control and makes the world feel alive. It’s one of the things we learned in game design

[@rex_melynas]

It used to be Hudell's passion project, but real life and stress took to much from him sadly and had to abandon the project. Sad the new devs didn't even kept the fantasy spirit. I understand moving it to unity, rpg maker was in a sense limiting it, but still

[@nerdyespurr]

You know customization is bad when the skin colors are similar to your average picrew

[@connormarshall1272]

25 dollars??? D: sun haven is on 50% off sale rn at £10.99, it is such a good game if you are looking for a farming sim with fantasy and light rpg elements plus the character customization is so indepth compared to pretty much any other farming game ive played! The story is good and the variety in npc species and gender are also good. One downside is the amound of small content dlcs however those are exclusively cosmetic so unless you need a specific item for an aesthetic build (which you can make nice furniture and builds w/o the packs) its just a small way to support the devs

[@WizeDemon]

Sounds to me the new dev team thought easy money, alot of the game is done and farming sims are popular at the moment, only to screw it up and abandon it

[@soccergalz7401]

Heartbroken as a member of the rpgmaker community. Hudell worked so hard on the game and it was such a great showcase of the engine before all of this happened.

[@Firstborndragon]

I played it when it was on RPG maker, and I had fun. Haven't touched it since it was moved over to Unity. I KNEW this would happen, because frankly the game was unplayable from last Dec/Jan when they moved to Unity. Then nothing till a week before the big launch. And even THEN there were massive complaints about bugs and things needing to be fixed.

[@zillo1600]

At first i thought it couln't be that bad and than i saw this sorry excuse for a map. What is that? Who decided that was a good idea and in anyway helpful for the player?

[@xThatAwkwardGamer]

The map actually gets me so heated like, HELLO what is that?!?!

[@SarahSyna]

It looks like a fast travel selection screen rather than a map.

[@weebeegeenov3634]

To rub salt on wound it used to actually have an actually useful map with icons where all the npcs were located

[@pineapplesmoovey7898]

More like Coconut Season

[@cortneyburns2551]

I think im probably the most disappointed person bc i had never heard of it before, until 1 month before it got released, and got so excited because the trailer looked SO cute and promising. All the points you made were spot on. I think its so weird that we cant do the most basic of things that are in most farming sims like upgrading tools? And our bag starts out huge too! It feels like all the fun work is done for us and theres not much to work towards. I played for a couple hours and just lost interest. 😮‍💨

[@MaakaSakuranbo]

Top left has a heart bar. Isn't that why the day ended? At least it is at like 1 bar when the day ends at 10:59 there in the video. And then refills seemingly as the screen starts going black. Like, sure, could be communicated better though.

[@mommalion7028]

14:26 I mean I get releasing a thing just so you can stop tinkering with it but they charged waaaaay too much for what is basically just a concept.

[@HanamiHime]

My sympathy couldn't be lower. I'm not OK with releasing unfinished games. You have to be prepared when developing games. The most brazen thing for me is when developers just jump to the next game instead of fixing the old one. (Shout out to the developers at Sunnyside) My trust in cozy developers has decreased and I will be more cautious in the future. 😓

[@lunaria33games]

I got travellers rest instead of this game and I’m so happy I did. Something just felt off when I played the demo for Orange Season a week ago and that’s not knowing any of the tea on the game 👀.

[@xThatAwkwardGamer]

Travellers Rest is SO good definitely recommend that one to anyone!

[@alexanderfletcher3375]

I have never seen a vtuber model use a sim (I think) as a model. Also. Good vid

[@xThatAwkwardGamer]

Thank you I actually use Animaze a free program to move the model and another site is where I got the model for free! But the backgrounds are made in the sims. ☺️

[@egotisticalnightmares]

I got the game on sale for 10$ before all the changes and I still feel ripped off. Sad to see what's happened to this game.

[@stevesgaming7475]

Soedesco are very low effort developers. I avoid their games now after mistakenly buying them in the past.

[@ardosims]

That's rough... I've been following the development of this game for pretty much a decade on the dev community... I remember playing a demo back then and hating the village layout... I'm sad to hear it didn't get better... If they still use the same engine as back in the day, I can say the bugs are quite easy to fix. Even making a better map system to find the NPC is easy to make... Like you said, it's either the team didn't have the time... or the will...

[@charlieodea]

Made me so sad cuz I should have watched more gameplay before buying it on switch for full price. Half baked, and terrible. Watched Eeowna play it on stream right after buying it and was so saddened. Bummer for sure! Surprised more people are not talking about it tbh, thanks for making a video!!

[@MissFushi]

Thank you for this review. I was offered a code for content and was giving it some thought. I searched and found your video and it answered a lot of the concerns I had. Appreciate your work!

[@Ourosrandomshit]

Besides the character sprites the art style of this game is so cute. A shame, wish it wasn’t broken. I think the town is super cute

[@PrincessBubblegum]

I notice that some times the NPCs walk sideways while there body is facing the front

[@mommalion7028]

For $25 you can get the sims 4 + cottage living during one of those half off sales. I know ea it’s evil but you can make a pretty stinkin cute farm

[@Ac3_Silvers]

Heck you can get the base game free and use a little sailing the seas to get the entire thing free, PLUS a ton of mods to fix and improve it all the more

[@alldolledupinstraps]

You can get stardew valley for like $15.

[@luck-e42]

Sounds like a great antisocial farming game. Don't want friends? Hate maps making scenes? Play this!

[@camithepokefan2492]

It's so sad I loved playing the early access a long time ago and now it's just garbage. Everything that was fun and made me love the game is gone

[@endrgar]

The pixel art isn't bad. But this isn't the game it was meant to be.

[@intersexcryptid]

I hate that indie farming sims are basically untrustable at this point. I love farming sims but it looks like I'm going to be sticking with harvest moon/story of seasons from now on because while they aren't always thrilling, they at least work and they stop tweaking and changing them at some point. I hate it when the whole game changes.

[@unknowable4147]

PLEASE be more confident in your opinion! You are completely right, and not being too hard! 23$ is a LOT of monex for a game that you couldnt even PROGRESS in!

[@sweethistortea]

I thought this video came from someone with over 30k subscribers! The video is a really good quality, I love your vibe! ♥️ (I actually watched this while playing Dreamlight Vally. 😅)

[@DCatGameDeveloper]

Hmmm yeah I felt that about the customization, as I beginner game dev I don't intend to put character customization in my game either, it's absurdly out of my reach to do that alone without knowledge of coding so... My game's a mix of Earthbound + Harvest Moon, 9 months of development already and it's quite playable already, but I'll be developing through the whole 2025 year to fill it with enough interesting and engaging content to people enjoy a good time with it.

[@ZayabelDraga13]

I really love your character model and background! How did you do it?

[@amandabernard8179]

I got the game and played it. I couldn't even figure out how to even exist in the game. And that was a week before the game release. I'll get rid of it

[@astraphel1896]

I had a bad feeling and I’m glad I got it dirt cheap when I did and never played it. Time to yeet it to the void

[@scottedgil5245]

Do you think this will ever get better ?

[@puan1211]

Propably not. I don’t even know why they exited EA since there wasn’t even an update on release day

[@CeliriaRose]

Highly unlikely. Other than a small update at the start of this month the last update was version .11 in January 2023. So basically two years of nothing and then suddenly it’s leaving early access. This was clearly Sodesco cutting it’s losses and shoving it out the door as is to make a quick buck.

[@LittleWerewolfPlushie]

I saw them say they were working on some issues with the game but, it sounds like that was just for some bugs....I doubt they'll do much.

[@chakrafist]

TWENTY THREE DOLLARS⁉️

[@realestone594]

Has anyone played it on console? Is it still that bad?

[@Gxmwp]

(unrelated to the video, but your model and setup is nice)

[@mommalion7028]

16:46 what?! You don’t like Dreamlight valley. That is literally my favorite right now. I love the weekly dream snaps. They are sooo fun!!!

[@MaakaSakuranbo]

I want something like Dreamlight Valley, but I'm just not that much into Disney stuff :

[@emilyofjane]

It cost HOW MUCH

[@creativename2567]

Why the fear of just saying the game sucks?

[@deadnameisdead]

Great Video Sad what this game become:/

[@HisokaxIlumi]

I bought it way back and it was incomplete, yet awesome. Haven't touched it in the last few years as I saw on YT what has become of the game... So sad. I really liked it. But there are enough other games, so, yeah, maybe one day the may fix this game and then I may play it again...

[@Gamma_Churchill]

Was the game entirely original cuz no offense this looks like diet Stardew Valley

[@AzweeeL]

ppl are so lazy

[@ErgoDog]

I hope these cozy, faming games will die out soon. 😅 they way all the girlies are hyping them up is awful

[@ingeniouspixie]

Wow, strong words from you!! That's sad. Seems like it would have been better to just scrap it than let it languish for so long. I give a 👍🏻 for the blue hair though! 😂🥴

[@xThatAwkwardGamer]

Yeah I usually don’t go this hard on games. It’s a real Shame this one unfortunately ended up the way it did.

[@wolvertox311]

Your v tuber makes me so uncomfortable

[@cjward72]

Please play my time at sandrock/portia👍👍

[@Bio_genese]

I'm sorry but this review is wholly unhelpful. I watched the whole thing and i gathered only 2 constructive comments: you don't understand the map for some reason (no very clear arguments there) and the game balancing is too lenient. I have not played this game i have no feelings about it but this is a terrible review. Maybe consider a script. Its all over the place and not useful.

[@cosygracegames]

The tea on this one! 🫖 I loved this video

[@PrincessBubblegum]

🥲 not me buying it because I love farming games 😅