Kynseed review: a promising RPG, but not all its promises are fulfilled
More puns than RPS straplines
Playing Kynseed is kind of like being allowed too much freedom at the pick-n-mix. It's not that all the separate parts go badly together, having chocolate jazzies and cola bottles all jumbled in together is exactly what I want. The problem is that it can't possibly live up to what you hoped for when you're scooping treats into that weighty paper bag. There's a surprise chalkiness in the chocolates, some of the gummies are glued together, and in your haste, you've nabbed two lookalike sweets and mismanaged your expectations. At a glance, it's precisely the rainbow-coloured jumble you wanted, but often it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
Kynseed is an RPG, and a life sim, and a sandbox. It is also Cooking Mama, and Moonlighter, and a dungeon crawler. It is gentle vibes ASMR relax-and-watch-the-seasons-change, and also crass and knowingly subversive. It does some of these things excellently, while other parts just don't hold up.
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I compare Kynseed to pick-n-mix intentionally. The disparate parts of it do, as concepts, mostly go together. It isn't thoughtless or careless, but it promises more than it can offer right now. You could indulge yourself in some very precise aspect of it and try not to touch the parts of it that aren't working, but you'd have to pick your way through carefully. It's an intriguing promise, though, and I can see it being an incredibly captivating game - when it's finished.
