Forager combines mechanics commonly seen in idle games with those of an adventure or exploration game. With resources that respawn at a very high rate, the player will find themselves able to harvest massive amounts for crafting and leveling, eventually leading to automated systems to collect resources and produce other products and goods. The leveling system in the game consists of a large grid of unlockable perks, which also may unlock new tools or craftable objects. Everything the player does from harvesting resources, to crafting objects, to killing enemies, has a positive impact on their XP used to advance levels. The player is able to simulate a variety of tasks related to cooking, economics, engineering, farming, fishing, hunting, magic, manufacturing, mining, and more. By obtaining money through crafting, skills, looting, and economic tasks, the player is able to purchase more lands to expand their base, explore new areas, and obtain new classes of resources or encounter new enemies and other NPC.
Development
The developer of Forager, Mariano Cavallero, dropped out of school to develop Video Games. For a year he learned how to program Games, unfortunately nobody was interested in his Games at first. After he ran out of money, he moved back home to his mom, who invested her life savings into her sons projects. He started developping Forager in a Game Jam but eventually ran out of money again. Before giving up Mariano participated in one last competition, in which he won a trip to the USA to show of his work. A friend he met at a conference was late to a meeting because he was playing Forager. The person he was meeting had to come look for him, and he showed Forager to this person. This Person was working for Humble Bundle and offered a publishing deal for Forager. A year after release on Steamthe Game had sold 600'000 times.
Reception
Forager received "generally favorable" reviews, according to review aggregatorMetacritic. Nathan Grayson wrote a review on Kotaku calling Forager an "extremely well-made" game and called it "obviously a labor of love" while also noting that the game was "a crafting game stripped down to its very bones" and stating that players may prefer a game with "more than pure progression". Jeff Ramos on Polygon says that the games repetitive and tedious nature serve to "make the game's bright moments all the brighter" and says that "in Forager, grinding is almost all I have to do, and I can hardly pull myself away" praising the game for its use of grind-heavy mechanics.
