I've got a busy month ahead with GOTY-related features, but nothing stops the Indie Game of the Week. I picked out HopFrog's Forager because it's an excellent example of an undemanding podcast game: something I can half-heartedly chip away at while doing other things. An effective crystallization of survival games and idle clickers framed in a pleasantly anodyne top-down 16-bit pixel aesthetic, Forager is all about making gauges grow and inventory numbers get bigger as you forage and mine across an ever-expanding landmass with regenerating resources. The game has a progression structure, but lacks any overarching goals: rather, the player works towards short-term benefits at all times, figuring out where best to next expand their universe. Do they earn the money needed to add another island to their archipelago? Earn XP through busywork to unlock some new buildings or perks? Work towards the next upgrade for their pickaxe (faster resource acquisition) or shovel (better buried loot) or backpack (more inventory space)? Spend a few moments scouring the furthest points of their world for any rare resource nodes that may have popped in the meantime? Contribute valuable goods to their local museum to move ever closer to a special prize? Remodel an island to an attractive if immaterial home base, beautifying the surrounding area with paths, statues, and apiaries?

With no story beats to follow and no real conclusion in sight, it's entirely up to the player how deep they wish to get into Forager's systems and progression, not dissimilar to survival/crafting forebears like Minecraft and Terraria. One area where it differs is in how the player can eventually start building resource generators that work automatically and endlessly to increase the player's assets in the background, which is where the idle clicker comparisons come in. I've been building a few extra "banks" - structures whose entire purpose is to slowly generate money - so I can purchase new landmasses sooner, and the most recent expansions have introduced new biomes (one looks like a desert and another a spooky graveyard, each popping resources unique to them), and now I'm looking at the means of rebooting some lapsed item upgrade trees now that I have access to the uncommon materials they need. Forager's gameplay has a simple loop, but a compelling one: it ensures there's always something to chase after, and will let you pin any recipe to your HUD to make the next destination easier to reach, until (one assumes) you eventually run out of things to find, build, or possess.

Experience and levelling plays a major part of the game's progression also: unlocking new structures to create, or new resources to procure, or new abilities that makes certain aspects of the game either easier or more efficient are all tied to the player's skill tree. This skill tree starts with four general quadrants: foraging, for living off the fat of the land; economy, for increasing your cash flow one way or another; industry, for building ever more elaborate structures for intermediary and advanced resources like steel or leather; and magic, which is a miscellaneous group of combat and fantastical perks. As level-ups get further apart as the XP requirement continues to inflate, the wide variety of choices available inspire that much more indecision: a passive buff to damage or increased wealth from mining might have to be temporarily put aside for the sake of new structures to build, since the latter is where you're likely to make big strides in what you can make.

For as much as I'm happily trapped in Forager's Skinner box, the game is not without some fundamental issues. Chief of which is a highly unstable framerate that probably started as a small issue and ballooned as the developer continued to add more content and polished the visual effects and graphics of what was already there. Most of the time the game will be stuck in something under 30fps (the in-game FPS counter won't actually go under 30, I assume as some sort of placatory placebo, but given the molasses-like pace it's clearly struggling to hit double-digits) while you'll see very brief windows of what 60fps looks like: just enough of a taste to make you long for the Elysium you're missing out on. This doesn't even seem to be a problem distinct to my all-too-common under-performing system woes; many of the Forager fan boards on Reddit and Steam suggest others are facing the same issues, all of whom with considerably more powerful rigs that should handle a 16-bit throwback Indie no problem. It sounds like it's even affecting the console ports. I'm not sure if I was just unfortunate to discover the game while it's in the midst of a temporary setback, or if this is a deeply ingrained issue relating to feature creep that, at this juncture, the developer has no plans or clues on how to fix. Either way, it's been highly detrimental to the playthrough, though not quite a dealbreaker just yet: after all, the game doesn't demand any serious skill or timing to its combat, which is where an erratic framerate would be a serious downer. Minor annoyances also include the usual compulsory (though are they?) survival sim elements like a dwindling hunger/energy meter that needs regular food to ameliorate and a strict inventory limit that you can address with certain upgrades.

I think with these resource-gathering survival sims you're either in on their endless looping systems or you're out, the latter possibly more inclined towards something with a narrative arc or meaningful progression that guarantees an eventual end state (or, perhaps, the idea of just collecting things ad infinitum doesn't appeal). For those inclined towards said sims, Forager is one of the purest versions of it I've encountered: there's barely any conflict besides the occasional dumbass monster; no multiplayer with groups vying for a limited pool of goods or lording their megalithic creations over the neophyte peons beating sticks and rocks together; everything regenerates quickly even if certain rare ores and plants might take a little longer and pop up further afield; and the game has a relaxed, unhurried vibe to it that implicitly encourages you to approach its smorgasbord of systems in any pace or order you wish. It is, in so many words and to circle back around to the start, a perfect podcast game - provided said podcast is being broadcast out of something other than your browser, since that might sap the framerate even further.

Rating: 3 out of 5.