Ooblets Review – A Cheerful Grind

Ooblets is a fun and uplifting combination of farming simulation, monster collecting, relationship building, and farming simulation. This delightfully chilling pill is difficult to swallow due to the tedious grind that makes it more challenging to keep your patience.  

The adventure whisks players to Badgetown, a quirky village where residents harmoniously live alongside Pokémon-esque creatures called Ooblets. The townspeople are open to your help, despite you being a newcomer. This involves cleaning out trash and repairing buildings. You will also make new friends. Ooblets is in many ways a purpose-driven Animal Crossing. This appealed to my preference for working toward tangible goals. 

Ooblets can help you check off everything on your to-do lists. Ooblets are companions and protectors that come in many varieties and rare species. Although they are cute, many of their designs seem uninspired. For every spring-legged jellyfish, there’s an Ooblet best described as a “mushroom with a smiley face” or “a plain bird.” Instead of catching Ooblets, you must obtain their seeds, then grow one on your farm. How can you obtain seeds? By defeating Ooblets in dance battles, the game’s humorous spin on turn-based combat.

In dance battles, teams as big as six Ooblets are pitted against one another. Cards can take on the role of commands, which adds an element to randomness. There are many cards that have a point value. The goal of a command is to get enough points to equal your opponent’s total score. You can only play certain cards per turn depending on the number of Beats they need (basically, mana points). You don’t build your deck; instead, you have a permanent selection of general-use cards with Ooblets bringing unique abilities, thus dictating your line-up. One Ooblet burdens the opponent’s deck with useless cards, another focuses on weakening their attack power, while others raise your card’s power by generating Hype. 

Dance battles can be a breeze, even with all the strategy. I have never lost one during over thirty hours of play, no matter what Ooblets I used. I don’t play aggressively. Dancing battles used to be a boring formality for me. The battle system is a fun, friendly, and non-violent way to introduce younger players to turn-based fighting.

The majority of your experience will be on your farm. Apart from growing Ooblets you also have to cultivate the crops. You do this by plowing and watering your land. This was my favorite aspect of Ooblets. My favorite part of Ooblets was designing the farm, and then configuring systems that produce optimal crops. Sometimes this can take several days. The job becomes even easier when you create tools, such as automated sprinklers. You can also assign extra Ooblets to your farm to tend to responsibilities like pulling weeds or harvesting the ripe yield while you’re away, providing a nice incentive to obtain as many of these little helpers as possible. 

Farming crops and gathering materials, whether plucking them from the earth, fishing them out of the sea, or recycling them out of trash, is pivotal to Ooblet’s progression. Every major task requires players to deliver bundles of materials, whether you’re restoring Badgetown’s clubhouses, repairing a hot air balloon to travel to new cities, or fulfilling a ton of fetch quests. Having a bit of everything on you at all times matters; you can’t even challenge Ooblets to dance battles unless you’re carrying a specific crop or a dish made from them. When Ooblets require vegetables you haven’t stored, it loses all its thrill and you must trek home. 

Quests began to lose their appeal once I realized they’re the same, sometimes lengthy, exercise of growing or scavenging materials. This meant I was often dependent on the time and meters. There were times when my options were limited, so I had to go with the flow until the vital resource grew or was replenished. These progression roadblocks can sometimes be too much. One campaign mission required me to grind hundreds of precious Gummies, the game’s currency, to pay an arcade hacker. A second job required me to repeatedly climb and descend mountain paths that were guarded from NPCs. Their requests couldn’t be fulfilled unless I returned home. Having some tasks rewarded with Wishies, a secondary currency spent on upgrades, helps but it’s not enough. 

Other elements and activities don’t entirely click either. It can be tedious to run a shop, since you cannot sell multiple items at once. This makes restocking difficult. The appeal of making the rounds with different people each day to establish friendship meters and unlock decent rewards is also lost. Because of my boredom at the fighting, I started to avoid The Dance Barn. They host dance battle tournaments where you can win daily prizes. Badgetown and other locations offer very little reason to return once the campaign quests are completed. Given how crucial eating food is to keep your energy up, a meter that drains throughout the day and fuels many basic actions, I was annoyed that snacks couldn’t be consumed without entering the menu, even when equipped.  

Ooblets provides solid entertainment and I like its happy tone. I only wish playing it didn’t feel so much like work. Clearing out checklists felt tedious and less satisfying despite the pride that I took in my farm. There’s fun to be had as long as you’re willing to work for it.