izigame.me

Firstly, I don't know what game the reviewer was playing who commented in the discussions that it runs perfectly on steam deck and should be verified. That was the sole reason I bought it early instead of waiting for more steam deck reviews.
It doesn't. The game is default setup to use the left and right triggers, with the track pad acting as a mouse. Why? It could use the A and B buttons instead with a joystick for much easier use. As is, it functions to play the bare minimum in the game but it's not intuitive and awkward to play. I played for only 45 minutes before my hands got so tired of the position.
It's setup to play using a computer, there was no thought for controller support. The game constantly is showing you keyboard controls that you can't use. And rotating. A big part is decorating your little space, rotating the toy to place stickers. Except you can't rotate using the steam deck controls. At least in my experience using the default setup. So I can't even fully utilize the decorating aspect.
The game itself is fine. You place crops, turn the crank. And the crops grow. There's different terrains. Which you have to obtain by growing different crops first. Or by using the fountain tool to get water and other terrain, like mud. Which you unlock a crop that needs water really early on, but you don't unlock the fountain until much water. Which didn't make any sense and I was really confused trying to figure out how to get water so I could plant it.
There's not enough plots to optimize your fields. So it feels extra grindy as you go through additional crank rotations to get what you need. I only got 4 additional plots after the first expansion as part of the tutorial. But it still felt extremely tight.
The decorations to place cost crops to buy. But you also need crops to buy other crops. And you only get 1 crop per square you plant. So it's not a great return.
The decorations are also super basic and not cute looking. Like great, I can pay some of my precious and limited crops to buy a basic wooden stool. Beautiful. The notification also doesn't go away for new items in the shop. And it got really annoying. Like thanks, I know. I'm not buying them, they're ugly and I don't have any spare crops. So there was a constant blip in the shop corner trying to get my attention the entire playthrough. It should have gone away the first time you check out the page for the items.
It gave more of a completion aura than the cozy vibe the game was trying to express.
I had a plant wither, because I guess the fountain confused the cactus with its terrain while I was fiddling with placing it (I hadn't even turned the crank to advance a turn). It was a cactus, and then I got an achievement for reviving a withered plant after another couple cranks and more fountain fiddling. Except the cactus was still dead? And the terrain was still wrong. So it seemed like a whole lot of bugs instead of anything intentional. And idk how to even clear withered plants. So it was still there for several cranks.
The game could be decent with controller support. But its not there yet.
And the grind is annoying but still gave off the low stakes cute cozy vibe people look for in the genre. It's not quite a farming sim, like it is. But it's not. It's more like a puzzle.
If the game gave you more than 1 crop per square, then I could say otherwise. But it restrains you too much. With some crops costing 2 of other 'lesser' crops to buy these better crops, only to turn around and invest those in other different crops. You're in a constant loop starting the whole process over again with the basic cheap crops because the game doesn't give you enough for all that you need to spend them on.
It's an interesting idea versus simply selling them for money and buying seeds outright. But the fact that crops are the currency for both more crops and decorations really causes an issue and makes the game extra grindy, as you start the loop over and over.