izigame.me

TLDR:
Overall Score: 3.5 out of 5, passes in pass/fail
There's not a lot of replay value, the game takes 10-20 hours depending on your play style.
The love aspect is strangely lacking for a game where that is the core theme.
There's no way to control building placement, it's all decided for you. You're just managing relationships and workplaces.
My full review is that I think it's a cute cozy game with a great premise, but the game has weird amounts of depth in some places, and is very shallow in others. I'm going to go into detail because the developer seems to be active in the community, so I'm just passing on my feedback in hopes they're watching and reading reviews.
Love matches are based almost entirely on a 6 card memorization game (3 likes, 3 dislikes) which you play once and then the couple marries. I wish there were more depth than that for a game with the core premise of matchmaking, but that's it. There's (seemingly) no impact these likes/dislikes have outside of relationships -- I had fishermen who hated fishing but loved their job, ballroom dancers who hated dancing but also loved their jobs, etc. Love grows or shrinks depending on random interactions the couple has after that, or you can pay hearts to give them gifts or uncontrolled dates (more on that below).
There are also other relationships: friends, enemies, minions, etc. These, for the most part, were entirely chance based. I couldn't force someone to talk to a coworker or a neighbor, the only guaranteed relationships were with immediate family. Everything else happened by chance. Once a character met someone, it was impossible to change their relationship type directly. You either grow the relationship, roll the dice and see what happens, or make them forget each other for 800 hearts. The success of all the chances is based on their trait compatibility, so if they have bad trait compatibility, you're SOL.
If they were enemies, I couldn't force them to resolve their issues, I just had to pay 125 hearts for a meeting and hope it went well. If someone fell in love, I can't make them ask to just be friends, I either needed to pay 800 hearts so they forgot each other forever or deal with them possibly breaking up their marriages I orchestrated. The fact that I'm paying hearts to make these meetings happened made me feel like I should have some control, or at least be brought on the meetup. Instead I just got a pop up that it went well and there's a positive effect or it went poorly and there's a negative effect. Additionally, the game seems to only punish you for having non-friendly relationships, which doesn't make sense. If this whole game is about the complexity of life, interactions, growing together, etc, I feel like enemy relationships shouldn't be such a negative. The only positive I saw to the relationships other than the workplace ambiance (explained below) is that they'd consume one extra or one less item, which just felt pointless.
All that being said, the worker placement in the game and the genetics were interesting. Planning to have kids fill certain jobs once they get older, putting together pairings that resulted in better kids, etc. was an enjoyable part of the game and had more depth than I was expecting. There's also "ambiance" to a work station, so if you have a worker with kind traits or have workers that are friends, they affect the ambiance of the workplace positively. Conversely, if you have someone who is mean or two coworkers that are enemies, they will affect the ambiance poorly. Positive ambiance increases production, while negative decreases it. Hopefully you can see why it's very frustrating that you can't make two farmers with compatible traits meet and be friends, but the game is happy to roll the dice and have two seamstresses with completely opposite traits meet and hate one another. Because I didn't have the hearts to make everyone forget each other, this usually resulted in a shuffling of workers between related workplaces to get the ambiance to neutral or positive.
The relationship building was what annoyed me the most in the game because that's *the point* of the game, that's the core mission and it was so strange that it seemed a little hollow. However, I also have other complaints about other aspects of the game:
- Building is literally just based on how many items you have. That's it. There's no minigame about placement, no synergy between workplaces, no visual customization, there's no research function, nothing. You just build your little tailor shop, the game removes the fog of war, and you have it now. It felt a little cookie-clicker if I'm honest.
- Why can family trees only show up to grandparents? I had great grandparents who didn't have any relationship with their great grand kids, and people descended from my first settler who I had to jump through multiple trees to find. If people are in the same family, they should all know each other, even if they're not immediate. People should be able to see their full trees. This is literally a game called Lakeburg Legacies!
- Gender doesn't matter at all with regards to children and anyone can marry anyone else (yay!), but there's still a gender binary indicator in the game (boo!). Just remove the gender indicator and let me change the hair and face to look like the gender I want. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, it felt a little bit like we were happy to celebrate queerness as long as the T was silent.
Overall, again, I didn't dislike the game. It was just a strange mix of incredible depth and "did anyone think about this at all?" I've been watching this game for a long time, saw that the reviews were improving, and saw that it was on sale recently, which is why I bought it. I'm not unhappy I bought it!
As always, support small creators and studios, support queer-friendly games, support new and innovative ways to play games. I'll be watching the game as it develops and see where it goes.