I'm the same way Josh, comparing everything to SDV to every farming sim is just so exhausting of an argument, UNLESS there's an insane amount of similar details like Brookhaven Grimoire
@@Kogami Oh people most def do! I'm a content creator who also covers a lot of farming sims and there's always at least one comment, esp for my Coral Island vids, that is just complaining that this looks like SDV clone... I'm always just like 😡😡
the worse part is that SV itself is just another HM-like game, like, yeah, this or that feature is the same in Stardew, but the feature in stardew is the same from many Harvest Moons, like if a farming game is a "Stardew ripoff" just for being a farming game, then what about Stardew Valley? isn't it just a "Harvest Moon ripoff" as well? No, each game trys to bring a new perspective, a new set of features, they are not SV-like, not even HM-like in most cases, people should stop trying to compare every game and see what they bring to the table, every good farming game brings something new, being it a new feature, a combination of them or even a new approach...
It’s super annoying, and it goes the other way around too. I watched this guy play harvest moon for the first time and all he did was talk about how stardew valley was better.
Especially since Stardew is mediocre and empty at best. It's incredibly shallow. No clue why it's the "gold standard". Rune Factory 4 is better in every aspect.
Maybe I’m just used to World of Darkness RP and stuff but thats like…. The WORST vampire game ever. There is actually no point to the main character being a vampire except to make him a Mary Sue? Specially with a day and night system in the game? Where is the hiding from the sun? Where is the blood drinking? MAYBE you can say the art is cute but the concept is so cozywashed it doesn’t even make sense. Concept for Brocula is like 0/10. Take all the vampire BS out, make him just a normal dude and it at least it doesn’t reek of watpad Mary Sue.
I was genuinely so disappointed to find out it wasn't good. I really liked the concept, and art, and was excited for its full release, so the execution being so poor was one of my biggest let downs in a long time
@@elchikoriko592 eugh please i thought we left the whole mary sue thing in the deviant art days. I honestly dont understand how the mc being a vampire makes them a "mary sue". ESPECIALLY not wattpad mary sue. Why not a vampire mc?
@@elchikoriko592 Something like a farming game where you have to manage drinking blood but keeping up your appearance of a hardworking farmer sounds cool af
One thing that bothers me a lot with Brookhaven is the fact that there is no consistent pixelart resolution. The UI, backgrounds, characters, portraits and cursors are all at wildly different resolution, making it look like a textbook example of a babies' first asset flip
I just can't get over how similiar this looks to Stardew Valley only because of their sprites. It's pretty annoyingly common to compare any farming games to Stardew these days but here it's the only time I go "this is just like Stardew Valley" LOL
@@SimuLord i feel like coral island does distinguish itself tho, not only with the art style, but with a lot of the game mechanics, especially the ocean aspect.
@@agroteraaaanot really... If you take Stardew Valley out of the equation, you think Coral Island exists today? Most likely not bc every developers has a peanut brain thinking making a farm simulator will make them rich bc Stardew made millions of dollars. People are tired seeing too many farming sims 😂
18:51 10/10 cat sound. That's literally just a grown-up dude sitting at his desk saying the word "meow" like he's discussing how it should be spelled 😂
Fun fact - the idea of vampires being hurt by sunlight was NOT in the novel Dracula (Vampires being killed by the sun was more of a later addition to Vampire lore) though he was affected by the sun in some ways he was not hurt or killed by it... that's all I got. That games named after Dracula so I thought I'd share.
I believe it was the Nosferatu movie that made that particularly lethal addition, though vampires have been nocturnal for ages, something to do with the idea of them being corrupt or wrong, sleeping during the day being yet another an abbrivation. That and more than a few vampire accusations happened if someone had nightmares (as the word says, at night.) about a recetntly deceased person. It also doubles as an explanation on why nobody ever sees them and/or a moral about staying home at night.
From what I understand Vampirism is based on the disease that makes your body unable to produce vitamin D or C. It causes your skin to be pale and cause sunlight to burn your skin. It could cause deformities. Of course the church would judge you based on your appearance so you'd only come out at night, avoid the church, and doctors would even prescribe drinking blood to get the vitamin that your body couldn't produce. It still exists today.
i do think it gets annoying when people compare a thing to something more popular but sometimes it really is too similar. brookhaven grimoire feels like the dev played sdv, had a "why doesn't this have x? i could do this so much better" moment and made this game. all of the features feel like something someone would turn into an sdv mod. not entirely related, but it reminds me of something someone else said a while back that went something like, "never trust a game made out of spite, because the dev will be too preoccupied with "improving" the game it was inspired by to focus on making a good game"
I'm not a game developer, but a writer, and that hits too close to home. When I was 17-18 I had a you could say... phase when I was making stories and characters out of spite. Looking at them now, they all feel clunky and serve no purpose other than to "impove" a random anime I got obsessed with but had a "why doesn't this have x? i could do waaay better" moment. Those stories got much better once I adapted them as something completely separate from the "inspiration", cuz I could finally focus on creating stuff I like instead of messing with other people's concepts.
The problem with many farming sim nowadays is they trying to put as many things as possible without actually taking care of the quality, it feels like you got 20 bland sandwich instead of 1 delicious mouth-watering special double cheese hamburger
The "Sebastian" and "Haley" wisecracks about Brookhaven: Grimoire (which has an inciting incident lifted right out of Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift) got an audible laugh out of me. A literal LOL. Well-played!
It's not exactly you suffering that I pesonally enjoy to watch, it's more a "vetting" of games. The Steam library is so huge and there are so many games with negative reviews who do not deserve them or would be fun for me anyways. Yeah, these videos are entertaining to watch because there's some real train wrecks of games out there, but I honestly see these as time savers. So - thank you, honestly.
Brocula seems to have taken quite a few mechanics from Graveyard Keeper. The cooking steps, the holding keys to craft, tools breaking, even the sawhorse to turn logs into filchand being unable to just put them into the inventory. So far all I'm seeing is a reskin of GK with a lackluster coat of paint. At least in GK your walk is fast enough that you dont even need the ability to run xD.
Fun fact! Vampires only started to be affected by sunlight was with Dracula, where, while it wouldn't destroy him, he would be weakened. It was introduced as deadly in Nosferatu (1922). Before then, media with vampires had no issue with sunlight, and given vampire media began in 1702, there was a lot of sunlight dwelling vamps.
Keep working to improve! You can definitely see the heart and soul in it even if it did end up messy. I love the art a lot. Especially the little bats.
I personally liked the concepts: working shifts at stores, bats lifting stuff for you etc. With a major overhaul of mechanics, and maybe shifting the game to nighttime, it could make a charming game!
I really want to play this game ever since I saw some videos about the concept , improve it and don't give up please! Also put more vampiric rules in it, makes it more interesting.
bad farming games and tedium, name a more iconic duo lol. The fishing bug from brocula took me out but five minutes for a boring minigame necessary for game progression? That's crazier. Thanks for suffering for us Josh
As someone who has played farming games since Friends of Mineral Town, you start to genuinely notice the differences that make each game unique. Brookhaven Grimoire is just bad Stardew Valley. It's not even being unoriginal in the normal sense-- it cops from Stardew alone and not a single other source, none.
Thank you for suffering for our sakes! Brookhaven Grimoire looks like someone behind it kind of had an idea they wanted to pursue, but had no confidence in anything related to design so they tried to copy as much as possible from what worked and scrabbled together whatever they could for the things they couldn't make work. Brocula actually has a really charming intro animation; a shame that it seems all of that vanishes the moment the gameplay starts. Dementria Spirit is... damn, that's not even 'early access', that's a prototype lol.
I have to say, with the first one it feels like someone wanted to make a farming game real badly. But only had the RPG-Maker, Stardew assets and good old paint.
It's crazy that these games have set it up so you can sell required resources (like the work permit and tools), instead of just making special items their own category.... like every other video game has figured out how to do for decades.
I agree with you about SDV, I decided to start developing a game inspired by Earthbound but with farming mechanics, and I received a lot of comments saying that I'm plagiarizing SDV, it's very unfair and demotivating, but we need to learn to filter this kind of thing.
I'd love that! Maybe it would work better starting at "mixed" reviews! I'm a niche player and many of my favorite games are not very well received by many lol
I remember seeing the brocula trailer on cozy games directive early summer, I'm genuinely surprised to see the game to come out in that state. I can't imagine having my game to be hosted on a e3 like stream only to have it be so under developed on release.
Your comments about Brocula are so funny, I remember playing this game a few months ago to gather feedback for my game and it was really hard to get used to, I felt like the developer hadn't played other games of the genre and addressed common issues they have, it's really frustrating.
I actually played Brookhaven Grimoire back when it was called _Brookhaven_ (and I went by GothicSimmer) which I actually learned from you when you made a video of the game (Is Brookhaven the Farming Game with a GOOD Story we've Been Waiting for?), and I can understand the negative reception. When I played it, I got lost as the game didn't make things clearer such as how to earn money, how to get a weapon, how to upgrade your inventory, how to dig, etc., as well as how to deal with hazards like darkness and poison, and there's the issue of slow-paced progression (i.e, Stamina drains quickly unless you upgrade to Copper) which is more noticeable with the story. For example, the Plains Unwritten Lands requires casting a spell unlocked from Katya but in order to use it requires building a *Druid Circle* that requires *Fire essence* which requires killing enemies in Level 80-99 but to access Level 80 requires growing *Corn* that can only be grown in Summer and Autumn. Additionally, some quests can be impossible to complete if you don't plant items that can only be grown in that season (however, you can use a pot to plant indoors since Katya sells the Bay Leaf. However, George won't sell seeds in seasons you can't plant them in). You can't even access the last Unwritten Lands until Winter which requires solving the other lands. Slow progression isn't excusive to Brookhaven Grimoire and as someone who's played The Sims, Minecraft, and Terraria, it's a similar issue with these games. Terraria, for example, can feel slow and boring, especially on Expert and Master, until you get better equipment, accessories, and more health where the game gets better. I do like how different Brookhaven Grimoire is from other games such as the supernatural themes and the story, but your video and my experience playing the game makes it evident why people would rather skip the game.
16:56 Actually, there is many types of vampires. There's even books about them and the innumerable differences that they have depending on the culture that talk about them (never read them, only heard my friends talk to me about it). Of course, the books that I heard about debate about how many mythical and legendary beings, or even creatures from books, can or cannot be called a vampire and debates what could be the limit between associating said beings to vampires or they being their own magical, mystical or supernatural beings. There's many sorts of vampires, from beings that protect places to beings that are monstrous and hunt humans, from beings that can't go under sunlight to beings that have no problem with sunlight, from beings that hide their monstrous form to beings that are naturally beautiful, etc. The thing that is often mentioned on those books is that a common thing to all vampires, though, even if they have all this variety, is that all of them do drain some sort of vital force, be it directly by blood (that many cultures associated with vital energy) or vital energy (ki, mana, vitality, hp, etc). Some books even classify those vampires as vampiric beings, independently if they are understood directly and precisely as a vampire. I love RPG, writing and mixing those 2 topics so I like to collect many sorts of info. I hope that it helped somehow. ^^
This video was VERY enjoyable to watch. Great work as always! One of these I really wanted to get but seeing this BOY OH BOY I'm glad I didn't. Keep up the great work!
Brookhaven is so strange and tonally incohesive. The game starts with a victim of bullying and mandatiry lamb slaughter... But also its trying to be a cozy farming sim with silly anthropomorphic sharks asking for maple syrup. It seems like it has no idea what it wants to be, even visually its almost 1 for 1 the swme as stardew. No unqiue takes on a magical faming town (magical plants for harvest? Kooky nonhuman townspeople, unique location outside of "green field") its such a WASTE.
I'm sad about Brocula, I was really looking forward to it in the run up to launch so was really surprised to see it get a mixed review rating straight away.
i played the brocula demo not too long ago. this game gave me such a headache and i thought it was just a me issue. glad to know the game is just garbage
Not all farming games should be compared to Stardew Valley because it’s its own special game within the genre, but it was disappointing to see how closely Brookhaven Grimoire tried to emulate many aspects of Stardew Valley while falling so short.
Man, there's like so many cute things about Brocula that I like, but the game itself is a mess. Like can you imagine if it had a system where you could automate item collection/harvesting via the bats picking things up and moving them? There's like a tiny glimmer of a good idea where, but terrible implementation.
Weakness to sun is a fairly recent addition to vampire mythos, and honestly I hate the "sun kills a vampire instantly" thing, I can get behind it weakening a vampire, but outright turning to ash is so boring and unfun most of the times
I followed the development of Brocula during its early announcements, and the final product was so devastatingly disappointing that I've learned never to become too eager for a game again. It was even sadder when the dev kept promising patches but then completely dropped the game and moved on to another. It was kind of a giveaway that they were just making cash grabs and didn't have any passion for the actual products.
I remember Brocula, as Steam really tried hard to advertise the game to me when it came out, however the quite bad reviews from the very start discouraged me.
I mean this simply as a hypothesis, but I wonder if Brookhaven Grimoire started out as a Stardew Valley mod and it simply evolved into its own game. It would explain the extreme similarities in the sprite style and several parts of the format.
It's the same thing with life simulation games where Paralives, inZOI, and even the canceled Life by You are often called "Sims competitors" or "Sims rivals" simply because these games would share The Sims' gameplay mechanics but games sharing gameplay mechanics aren't new. For example, Hogwarts Legacy could be compared to Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2077, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and even Baldur's Gate 3 and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and its predecessor, Breath of the Wild, due to being RPGs or open world games sharing similar gameplay mechanics.
@@ScarletAmethystor a more ridiculous example when the game where cartoon animals have guns (I forgot how it's called, something with P) was compared to Pokémon even though they share virtually no gameplay mechanics, Pokémon is turn based and the other game is action/survival. The only two things they share are cartoon animals and collection aspect, but at that point you can compare any gacha idol game or Genshin to Pokémon.
@@ratspew932 The game in question is Palworld and yeah, it has drawn comparison to Pokémon which is similar to what happened with Digimon when it was introduced. Speaking of Nintendo, I remember the Steam Deck often got compared to the Nintendo Switch even though the Deck and other handheld PCs are different from the Switch. I also can't forget Terraria and Starbound getting compared to Minecraft.
Brookhaven is the best example of developers trying to capitalize on the popularity of farming sims (particularly Stardew Valley) and it's a shame because it spawns the most godawful farming games in existence
What is interesting is that some of these games would be so much better if you had more information of how things work and have the game stick to an easy handling of the menus and general actions you have to go through.
I could not stop laughing through the whole Brookhaven section. Honestly you really do so much for your community and sorry for the pain of playing these games
Vampires traditionally are only weakened by sunlight, not killed outright. In the novel Dracula, the titular vampire stalks his victims during the day, so he knows where to strike at night. Edit: That last game is cracking me up. Hearing that you have to provide wood so the postal worker can make paper to wrap your package, it tells me that it's not just you. EVERYONE has to go through crafting Hell to do their job in this setting. Maybe your character actually IS in Hell?
The art isn't consistent, inside of the houses have a different style than the outside, that's different of the stile of the inventory that's different of the forest style
16:53 Actually nope! Someone wrote a story about vampires being allergic to sunlight and people took the troupe and ran to make them less scary. Originally vampires had no issues with sunlight so it’s probably based off of that.
let's go more of this XDD im sorry for your suffering -- saw the whole vid now of all the three I hope more patches get updated for Brocula. I saw the charm and potential in that due to the art that they used but I do hope they patch everything that's wrong with it over time. Maybe one day we'll get to see it. 😮💨
Given tutorials are done to educate people, having a tutorial to better optimize settings is actually quite helpful. Before anything else you want the game running smoothly, and given how rarely games are optimized these days telling someone they can make it better so they don't just accept poor performance as the standard is incredibly good. Saying it is a bad sign is shockingly cruel.
I'm pretty sure it's the Brookhaven that had the controversy of stealing assets from DSV mod. Either that or another game with pretty much identical artstyle, and the assets are 100% taken from this mod, since I recognize the assets.
I'm the same way Josh, comparing everything to SDV to every farming sim is just so exhausting of an argument, UNLESS there's an insane amount of similar details like Brookhaven Grimoire
if people say "this is just a Stardew ripoff :/" to any farming games just because it's a farming game I'm gonna show them Brookhaven Grimoire instead
@@Kogami Oh people most def do! I'm a content creator who also covers a lot of farming sims and there's always at least one comment, esp for my Coral Island vids, that is just complaining that this looks like SDV clone... I'm always just like 😡😡
the worse part is that SV itself is just another HM-like game, like, yeah, this or that feature is the same in Stardew, but the feature in stardew is the same from many Harvest Moons, like if a farming game is a "Stardew ripoff" just for being a farming game, then what about Stardew Valley? isn't it just a "Harvest Moon ripoff" as well? No, each game trys to bring a new perspective, a new set of features, they are not SV-like, not even HM-like in most cases, people should stop trying to compare every game and see what they bring to the table, every good farming game brings something new, being it a new feature, a combination of them or even a new approach...
It’s super annoying, and it goes the other way around too. I watched this guy play harvest moon for the first time and all he did was talk about how stardew valley was better.
Especially since Stardew is mediocre and empty at best. It's incredibly shallow. No clue why it's the "gold standard". Rune Factory 4 is better in every aspect.
The art and concept of Brocula is so cute, disappointing that it’s not done well
Maybe I’m just used to World of Darkness RP and stuff but thats like…. The WORST vampire game ever. There is actually no point to the main character being a vampire except to make him a Mary Sue? Specially with a day and night system in the game?
Where is the hiding from the sun? Where is the blood drinking? MAYBE you can say the art is cute but the concept is so cozywashed it doesn’t even make sense.
Concept for Brocula is like 0/10. Take all the vampire BS out, make him just a normal dude and it at least it doesn’t reek of watpad Mary Sue.
@@elchikoriko592 sorry... but not even google is helping with whatever "cozywashed" means. Elaborate with real words.
I was genuinely so disappointed to find out it wasn't good. I really liked the concept, and art, and was excited for its full release, so the execution being so poor was one of my biggest let downs in a long time
@@elchikoriko592 eugh please i thought we left the whole mary sue thing in the deviant art days. I honestly dont understand how the mc being a vampire makes them a "mary sue". ESPECIALLY not wattpad mary sue. Why not a vampire mc?
@@elchikoriko592 Something like a farming game where you have to manage drinking blood but keeping up your appearance of a hardworking farmer sounds cool af
One thing that bothers me a lot with Brookhaven is the fact that there is no consistent pixelart resolution. The UI, backgrounds, characters, portraits and cursors are all at wildly different resolution, making it look like a textbook example of a babies' first asset flip
brocula seems like it actually had a lot of potential to be a fun and cute lil game, unfortunate that theres so many lil issues
The beginning of Brookhaven is just like the movie, "The Neverending Story." The bullying, running into a book store, the old man etc. So strange lol
I just can't get over how similiar this looks to Stardew Valley only because of their sprites. It's pretty annoyingly common to compare any farming games to Stardew these days but here it's the only time I go "this is just like Stardew Valley" LOL
I got that feeling from Coral Island, which just never shook my feeling of "when Mom says we have Stardew Valley at home."
i was just thinking that some of the sprites look traced from sdv directly
@@SimuLord i feel like coral island does distinguish itself tho, not only with the art style, but with a lot of the game mechanics, especially the ocean aspect.
@@agroteraaaanot really... If you take Stardew Valley out of the equation, you think Coral Island exists today?
Most likely not bc every developers has a peanut brain thinking making a farm simulator will make them rich bc Stardew made millions of dollars.
People are tired seeing too many farming sims 😂
@@Chad-ug5mb I'm not tired of farming games.. let them keep coming!! Especially good ones, such as coral island.
18:51 10/10 cat sound. That's literally just a grown-up dude sitting at his desk saying the word "meow" like he's discussing how it should be spelled 😂
oh my gosh the cat sound in Brocula has me CACKLING
Meow
@@JoshGamingGarden "Meow"
It's as if the game dev just sat on his table and tried ti make cat sounds into the microphone.
i swear that is the tomodachi life voices you can customize for your miis. wild
Fun fact - the idea of vampires being hurt by sunlight was NOT in the novel Dracula (Vampires being killed by the sun was more of a later addition to Vampire lore) though he was affected by the sun in some ways he was not hurt or killed by it... that's all I got. That games named after Dracula so I thought I'd share.
I believe it was the Nosferatu movie that made that particularly lethal addition, though vampires have been nocturnal for ages, something to do with the idea of them being corrupt or wrong, sleeping during the day being yet another an abbrivation. That and more than a few vampire accusations happened if someone had nightmares (as the word says, at night.) about a recetntly deceased person. It also doubles as an explanation on why nobody ever sees them and/or a moral about staying home at night.
From what I understand Vampirism is based on the disease that makes your body unable to produce vitamin D or C. It causes your skin to be pale and cause sunlight to burn your skin. It could cause deformities. Of course the church would judge you based on your appearance so you'd only come out at night, avoid the church, and doctors would even prescribe drinking blood to get the vitamin that your body couldn't produce. It still exists today.
i do think it gets annoying when people compare a thing to something more popular but sometimes it really is too similar. brookhaven grimoire feels like the dev played sdv, had a "why doesn't this have x? i could do this so much better" moment and made this game. all of the features feel like something someone would turn into an sdv mod.
not entirely related, but it reminds me of something someone else said a while back that went something like, "never trust a game made out of spite, because the dev will be too preoccupied with "improving" the game it was inspired by to focus on making a good game"
I'm not a game developer, but a writer, and that hits too close to home. When I was 17-18 I had a you could say... phase when I was making stories and characters out of spite. Looking at them now, they all feel clunky and serve no purpose other than to "impove" a random anime I got obsessed with but had a "why doesn't this have x? i could do waaay better" moment. Those stories got much better once I adapted them as something completely separate from the "inspiration", cuz I could finally focus on creating stuff I like instead of messing with other people's concepts.
Brocula is so disappointing. It seems like whoever made it had more passion for art than actual game development
@@TonChinKanKun yea cuz the art is probably the only best thing about the game...
More like a passion for making easy money than art.
This game SUCKS!
Yep! The bat friend design is so cute… it deserves a better game.
Me if i did a game
@@robertwildschwein7207 the art is kinda good, principally the colors
The problem with many farming sim nowadays is they trying to put as many things as possible without actually taking care of the quality,
it feels like you got 20 bland sandwich instead of 1 delicious mouth-watering special double cheese hamburger
SoS wonderful life is breath of the fresh air. It doesn't have bloat of content
vampire lore varies wildly across cultures, but in the book Dracula can go out in the sun just fine.
the office worker twerking SENT ME. Poor Josh, Brocula looks exhausting, it hurt me to see you have to struggle through it
The "Sebastian" and "Haley" wisecracks about Brookhaven: Grimoire (which has an inciting incident lifted right out of Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift) got an audible laugh out of me. A literal LOL. Well-played!
It's not exactly you suffering that I pesonally enjoy to watch, it's more a "vetting" of games. The Steam library is so huge and there are so many games with negative reviews who do not deserve them or would be fun for me anyways. Yeah, these videos are entertaining to watch because there's some real train wrecks of games out there, but I honestly see these as time savers. So - thank you, honestly.
Brocula seems to have taken quite a few mechanics from Graveyard Keeper. The cooking steps, the holding keys to craft, tools breaking, even the sawhorse to turn logs into filchand being unable to just put them into the inventory. So far all I'm seeing is a reskin of GK with a lackluster coat of paint. At least in GK your walk is fast enough that you dont even need the ability to run xD.
right i was thinking that- I've played a lot of graveyard keeper so it was definitely weird to see
Man, Brookhaven is completely shameless...
And a "burger" with two slabs of raw dough, a chicken breast, and some cabbage. lol.
Fun fact! Vampires only started to be affected by sunlight was with Dracula, where, while it wouldn't destroy him, he would be weakened. It was introduced as deadly in Nosferatu (1922). Before then, media with vampires had no issue with sunlight, and given vampire media began in 1702, there was a lot of sunlight dwelling vamps.
I put my heart into this game, but it came out… kinda messy. Please accept my sincerest apologies (and enjoy the chaos)! - Creator of Brocula
Thanks for acknowledging it! I did enjoy the chaos in a way. 😃
Keep working to improve! You can definitely see the heart and soul in it even if it did end up messy. I love the art a lot. Especially the little bats.
I personally liked the concepts: working shifts at stores, bats lifting stuff for you etc. With a major overhaul of mechanics, and maybe shifting the game to nighttime, it could make a charming game!
There's so much potential, please don't give up
I really want to play this game ever since I saw some videos about the concept , improve it and don't give up please! Also put more vampiric rules in it, makes it more interesting.
bad farming games and tedium, name a more iconic duo lol. The fishing bug from brocula took me out but five minutes for a boring minigame necessary for game progression? That's crazier. Thanks for suffering for us Josh
As someone who has played farming games since Friends of Mineral Town, you start to genuinely notice the differences that make each game unique. Brookhaven Grimoire is just bad Stardew Valley. It's not even being unoriginal in the normal sense-- it cops from Stardew alone and not a single other source, none.
Okay but Phillip did not deserve to die. Perhaps he was resurrected and got to run his own cult…?
You figured it out, Cult of the Lamb is a spin-off of Brookhaven Grimoire 😲
just hearing you talk about how convoluted brocula is just makes me exhausted
The cat’s meowing had me laughing so hard. Definitely the best part of Brocula.
"Ready to get bullied" killed me lmao
I was looking forward to Brocula, so I'm sad to see it turn out his way. Thanks for saving me some money.
Loving the sass right from the beginning. I really thought emo boy's name was Sebastian for a sec xD
Roman is the perfect example of ''you can copy my homework but change it up a bit''
Thank you for suffering for our sakes!
Brookhaven Grimoire looks like someone behind it kind of had an idea they wanted to pursue, but had no confidence in anything related to design so they tried to copy as much as possible from what worked and scrabbled together whatever they could for the things they couldn't make work.
Brocula actually has a really charming intro animation; a shame that it seems all of that vanishes the moment the gameplay starts.
Dementria Spirit is... damn, that's not even 'early access', that's a prototype lol.
the idea of Josh chilling with his coffee and banana bread while waiting for Brocula to perish got a good laugh out of me
24:50 Just wanted to let you know that you repeating that goddamn sentence made me giggle uncontrollably. Absolutely fcking perfect comedy 🥹
I have to say, with the first one it feels like someone wanted to make a farming game real badly. But only had the RPG-Maker, Stardew assets and good old paint.
Plot twist: Josh was also fishing while creating this video.
It's crazy that these games have set it up so you can sell required resources (like the work permit and tools), instead of just making special items their own category.... like every other video game has figured out how to do for decades.
Josh with a straight face ‘So one is blue and the other one is orange’ 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I agree with you about SDV, I decided to start developing a game inspired by Earthbound but with farming mechanics, and I received a lot of comments saying that I'm plagiarizing SDV, it's very unfair and demotivating, but we need to learn to filter this kind of thing.
now i need the worst reviewed games that you actually liked!!
I'd love that! Maybe it would work better starting at "mixed" reviews!
I'm a niche player and many of my favorite games are not very well received by many lol
The “Yes that is what I am talking about” randomly in the rest of the video 😂😂
The traced sprites in Brookhaven are ridiculous, that game cannot be long for this world.
"I tried to get hit by the bus but it did not work as intended" 🤣
I remember seeing the brocula trailer on cozy games directive early summer, I'm genuinely surprised to see the game to come out in that state. I can't imagine having my game to be hosted on a e3 like stream only to have it be so under developed on release.
Me when Josh uploads: "Yes, that is what I am talking about."
Your comments about Brocula are so funny, I remember playing this game a few months ago to gather feedback for my game and it was really hard to get used to, I felt like the developer hadn't played other games of the genre and addressed common issues they have, it's really frustrating.
i was genuinely excited for brocula before it came out but i was so sad to see the reviews. thank you for showing us😭
Brookhaven Grimoire must have been programmed by a T-Rex or something. The arms on the characters are so short, I just can't get over it.
Brocula seems like such a nice concept, but handled by someone who didn't have their heart in it...
12:13 About the statue riddle - the answer is probably "rain" so I think you need to return there while it's raining?
I actually played Brookhaven Grimoire back when it was called _Brookhaven_ (and I went by GothicSimmer) which I actually learned from you when you made a video of the game (Is Brookhaven the Farming Game with a GOOD Story we've Been Waiting for?), and I can understand the negative reception. When I played it, I got lost as the game didn't make things clearer such as how to earn money, how to get a weapon, how to upgrade your inventory, how to dig, etc., as well as how to deal with hazards like darkness and poison, and there's the issue of slow-paced progression (i.e, Stamina drains quickly unless you upgrade to Copper) which is more noticeable with the story. For example, the Plains Unwritten Lands requires casting a spell unlocked from Katya but in order to use it requires building a *Druid Circle* that requires *Fire essence* which requires killing enemies in Level 80-99 but to access Level 80 requires growing *Corn* that can only be grown in Summer and Autumn. Additionally, some quests can be impossible to complete if you don't plant items that can only be grown in that season (however, you can use a pot to plant indoors since Katya sells the Bay Leaf. However, George won't sell seeds in seasons you can't plant them in). You can't even access the last Unwritten Lands until Winter which requires solving the other lands.
Slow progression isn't excusive to Brookhaven Grimoire and as someone who's played The Sims, Minecraft, and Terraria, it's a similar issue with these games. Terraria, for example, can feel slow and boring, especially on Expert and Master, until you get better equipment, accessories, and more health where the game gets better.
I do like how different Brookhaven Grimoire is from other games such as the supernatural themes and the story, but your video and my experience playing the game makes it evident why people would rather skip the game.
18:50 definitely a cat and not someone mimicking a prop plane going by
16:56 Actually, there is many types of vampires. There's even books about them and the innumerable differences that they have depending on the culture that talk about them (never read them, only heard my friends talk to me about it). Of course, the books that I heard about debate about how many mythical and legendary beings, or even creatures from books, can or cannot be called a vampire and debates what could be the limit between associating said beings to vampires or they being their own magical, mystical or supernatural beings.
There's many sorts of vampires, from beings that protect places to beings that are monstrous and hunt humans, from beings that can't go under sunlight to beings that have no problem with sunlight, from beings that hide their monstrous form to beings that are naturally beautiful, etc. The thing that is often mentioned on those books is that a common thing to all vampires, though, even if they have all this variety, is that all of them do drain some sort of vital force, be it directly by blood (that many cultures associated with vital energy) or vital energy (ki, mana, vitality, hp, etc). Some books even classify those vampires as vampiric beings, independently if they are understood directly and precisely as a vampire.
I love RPG, writing and mixing those 2 topics so I like to collect many sorts of info. I hope that it helped somehow. ^^
This video was VERY enjoyable to watch. Great work as always! One of these I really wanted to get but seeing this BOY OH BOY I'm glad I didn't. Keep up the great work!
Brookhaven is so strange and tonally incohesive. The game starts with a victim of bullying and mandatiry lamb slaughter... But also its trying to be a cozy farming sim with silly anthropomorphic sharks asking for maple syrup. It seems like it has no idea what it wants to be, even visually its almost 1 for 1 the swme as stardew. No unqiue takes on a magical faming town (magical plants for harvest? Kooky nonhuman townspeople, unique location outside of "green field") its such a WASTE.
Awh, I was really hoping Brocula would be good after seeing a trailer of it. Thanks for saving me some money
I'm sad about Brocula, I was really looking forward to it in the run up to launch so was really surprised to see it get a mixed review rating straight away.
i played the brocula demo not too long ago. this game gave me such a headache and i thought it was just a me issue. glad to know the game is just garbage
Brocula seemed the most promising out of these games, but it's disappointing that a lot of the game mechanics are broken
Not all farming games should be compared to Stardew Valley because it’s its own special game within the genre, but it was disappointing to see how closely Brookhaven Grimoire tried to emulate many aspects of Stardew Valley while falling so short.
Man, there's like so many cute things about Brocula that I like, but the game itself is a mess. Like can you imagine if it had a system where you could automate item collection/harvesting via the bats picking things up and moving them? There's like a tiny glimmer of a good idea where, but terrible implementation.
Just wanted to say I appreciate your sense of humor in these videos
“I would rather work in a REAL coffee shop” LMAOOO. I know it’s painful but these videos are so good, thank you Josh 🤣🤣🤣
“MEOW” 😂 omg
Yes, that is what I am talking about.
thank you Josh! I love trying new games, but it so helps getting a look at the bad games before trying.
19:05 Sadly my neighbors cat meows like this lmao
Weakness to sun is a fairly recent addition to vampire mythos, and honestly I hate the "sun kills a vampire instantly" thing, I can get behind it weakening a vampire, but outright turning to ash is so boring and unfun most of the times
I followed the development of Brocula during its early announcements, and the final product was so devastatingly disappointing that I've learned never to become too eager for a game again. It was even sadder when the dev kept promising patches but then completely dropped the game and moved on to another. It was kind of a giveaway that they were just making cash grabs and didn't have any passion for the actual products.
I remember Brocula, as Steam really tried hard to advertise the game to me when it came out, however the quite bad reviews from the very start discouraged me.
I mean this simply as a hypothesis, but I wonder if Brookhaven Grimoire started out as a Stardew Valley mod and it simply evolved into its own game. It would explain the extreme similarities in the sprite style and several parts of the format.
Thank you for part 2!!! ❤
Brocula did not skimp on the comic artwork though. That surprised me, how good it was. And animated way more than expected!
I am terribly sorry Josh to put you through this! But these videos are awesome! :D
Can't wait to finish this video andyour sarcastic humour! Thank you for your sacrifice o7
brocula seem to have good ideas cuz the crafting looked very cool but it needed a lot of polish
When even in the video games everyone’s trying to charge you for every little things but there’s no way for you to make money without tedious steps 😂
yAY! I've been waiting for a part 2. I love this series haha
It annoys me as well when people compare every farming sim to Stardew Valley, however some games you just can't help it.
Also "Meow." 😂😭
It's the same thing with life simulation games where Paralives, inZOI, and even the canceled Life by You are often called "Sims competitors" or "Sims rivals" simply because these games would share The Sims' gameplay mechanics but games sharing gameplay mechanics aren't new. For example, Hogwarts Legacy could be compared to Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2077, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and even Baldur's Gate 3 and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and its predecessor, Breath of the Wild, due to being RPGs or open world games sharing similar gameplay mechanics.
@@ScarletAmethystor a more ridiculous example when the game where cartoon animals have guns (I forgot how it's called, something with P) was compared to Pokémon even though they share virtually no gameplay mechanics, Pokémon is turn based and the other game is action/survival. The only two things they share are cartoon animals and collection aspect, but at that point you can compare any gacha idol game or Genshin to Pokémon.
@@ratspew932Palworld?
@@ratspew932Do you mean Palworld?
@@ratspew932 The game in question is Palworld and yeah, it has drawn comparison to Pokémon which is similar to what happened with Digimon when it was introduced. Speaking of Nintendo, I remember the Steam Deck often got compared to the Nintendo Switch even though the Deck and other handheld PCs are different from the Switch. I also can't forget Terraria and Starbound getting compared to Minecraft.
Brookhaven is the best example of developers trying to capitalize on the popularity of farming sims (particularly Stardew Valley) and it's a shame because it spawns the most godawful farming games in existence
37 minutes?! This is going to be spicy!!! I'm seated!🍿🍿🍿
I had too much to say about Brocula, I considered splitting it into its own video. 😅 Enjoy!
What is interesting is that some of these games would be so much better if you had more information of how things work and have the game stick to an easy handling of the menus and general actions you have to go through.
Love your honest commentary!
I could not stop laughing through the whole Brookhaven section. Honestly you really do so much for your community and sorry for the pain of playing these games
"Mum can we play Stardew Valley?"
"No, we have Stardew Valley at home"
Stardew Valley at home: Brookhaven: Grimoire
You poor soul, thank you for suffering for us so we can avoid things, lol.
Josh you literally made me laugh out loud during this video!! Love it :)
New Josh upload, now that is what I am talking about!
Everyone who has ever owned a cat can meow better than that.
Vampires traditionally are only weakened by sunlight, not killed outright. In the novel Dracula, the titular vampire stalks his victims during the day, so he knows where to strike at night.
Edit: That last game is cracking me up. Hearing that you have to provide wood so the postal worker can make paper to wrap your package, it tells me that it's not just you. EVERYONE has to go through crafting Hell to do their job in this setting. Maybe your character actually IS in Hell?
The art isn't consistent, inside of the houses have a different style than the outside, that's different of the stile of the inventory that's different of the forest style
16:53 Actually nope! Someone wrote a story about vampires being allergic to sunlight and people took the troupe and ran to make them less scary. Originally vampires had no issues with sunlight so it’s probably based off of that.
let's go more of this XDD im sorry for your suffering
--
saw the whole vid now
of all the three I hope more patches get updated for Brocula. I saw the charm and potential in that due to the art that they used but I do hope they patch everything that's wrong with it over time. Maybe one day we'll get to see it. 😮💨
I m always upset when pretty looking games flop. I feel bad for the artists. How did it go wrong u know?
Meow, meow, meow... too bad about Brocula, such a fun premise ruined by making everything tedious.
2:26 why is this giving the onceler
Given tutorials are done to educate people, having a tutorial to better optimize settings is actually quite helpful.
Before anything else you want the game running smoothly, and given how rarely games are optimized these days telling someone they can make it better so they don't just accept poor performance as the standard is incredibly good. Saying it is a bad sign is shockingly cruel.
Brocular is a torture device.
Cool video 👍.
What I can't imagine is how some people can give these positive reviews to reach mixed rating on steam.
I'm pretty sure it's the Brookhaven that had the controversy of stealing assets from DSV mod. Either that or another game with pretty much identical artstyle, and the assets are 100% taken from this mod, since I recognize the assets.
I feel like people shouldn’t be burdened by other peoples lore if they want to make vampires
the way that the first one has NO consistency with pixel size is driving me up the wall
that meowing sound will be in my nightmares