Roots of Pacha
The charming and relaxing stone-age farming sim where you live in a thriving community exploring the wonderful world of Pacha. Discover "ideas," domesticate crops, befriend animals, and help your village grow. Play co-op with friends or explore the early days of civilization in single-player.
Roots of Pacha is a indie, farming sim and pixel graphics game
developed and published by Soda Den.
Released on April 25th 2023 is available on Windows, MacOS and Linux
in 10 languages: English, French, German, Portuguese - Brazil, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish - Spain, Japanese, Korean and Traditional Chinese.
It has received 3,421 reviews of which 3,200 were positive and 221 were negative resulting in a rating of 9.0 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 14.99€ on Steam and has a 40% discount.
The Steam community has classified Roots of Pacha into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at Roots of Pacha through various videos and screenshots.
Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS *: Windows 7 or greater
- Processor: 2 GHz
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: 2 gb dedicated video card, shader model 3.0+
- DirectX: Version 10
- Storage: 1 GB available space
MacOS
- OS: Mac OSX 10.15+
- Processor: 2 Ghz
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: 2 gb video memory, OpenGL 2
- Storage: 1 GB available space
Linux
- OS: Steam Deck OS
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Storage: 1 GB available space
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
I am a big fan of Stardew Valley, and there are many games in the farming sim space which are trying to compete with SV. Roots of Pacha is probably the first game I have played in the genre which captures the vibe of SV properly. Many games are able to replicate a lot of the mechanics of SV, but the cannot capture the soul of SV. Roots of Pacha is very close to capturing the essence of SV, that is to say, enjoyable characters, a town/tribe you care about, an enjoyable routine to the gameplay loop, and comforting visuals. Roots of Pacha lacks the depth of SV, and the breadth of features, but it is the only farming sim I have really enjoyed outside of SV and Fields of Mistria. I recommend this game for people who enjoy Sta- well... you get it.
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I've been an avid enjoyer of the farming sim genre (played Harvest Moon [now known as Story of Seasons], Rune Factory, Stardew Valley, Harvestella, Sun Haven, etc.) and I really like how Roots of Pacha does its own twist on the farming sim genre. For me, Roots of Pacha is especially unique in its prehistorical setting and how integrated you feel in the community; some games make me feel like I'm the only one contributing, but here, it really feels like everyone plays a part in contributing towards the clan. I'm also a huge fan of the UI and the tool + seed bar! Although it seems overwhelming at first, I quickly got used to it and I really appreciate the little details that ties back to the prehistorical setting of the game. I also really love the torch and how you're able to smoothly switch between tools while moving. It's evident that the devs have poured a lot of love into this game. For example, during multiplayer, each player gets their own color, both on the map and in the cave. I also like how each player can make their own choice during a cutscene (although it's funny seeing the other party only respond to one of the choices if you choose a different one). Other features I really enjoyed are the confirmation button before gifting, the easily accessible calendar and map, the ability to see if there's a cutscene with a specific NPC or not, and being able to date someone or hangout together after turning them down. For the minigames, I really enjoyed the racing, fishing, and befriending animals minigames. I also love the festivals and the puzzle-based cave challenges! During multiplayer, some aspects are shared that, although they don't bother me, might bother others. The seeds, quests, animal taming progression/animal affection, and several cutscenes are shared. NPC cutscenes where they invite you aren't shared, but the ones that you stumble into are shared. For NPC-based cutscenes, only one player needs to trigger them and the others get teleported into the cutscene; for story cutscenes, festivals, races, and cave challenges, everyone needs to be present. Overall, I had a lot of fun both playing solo and with multiple players- I'd definitely recommend it to anyone interested in farming sims!
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I went into this game thinking it'd be a breezy simplified take on Stardew Valley. What I found was a game with a wheelbarrow of fresh ideas within its genre and enough polished content to rival Stardew Valley at release. Nothing in this game feels tacked on. tldr; Roots of Pacha is very good. Its a game that starts out small, but masterfully unveils itself to be one of the most well thought out games in it's genre. + Ranching is a full discipline in it's own right with animal husbandry, stats, rarity in appearance, and racing. + Cooking requires almost no investment to start, which lets it be a more important part of your play throughout the game. It'll still take a lot of investment if you want to be able to do everything, but the flexibility means almost every recipe is worth keeping in mind, rather than just the 1-3 most powerful ones. + Farming in this game has a completely different flow to other farming games. You cannot buy seeds and there are no sprinklers. You have to forage for seeds from wild crops each season, turning the first few days of each season into an almost easter egg hunt. Later in the game you'll have other ways to water crops and get seeds, but their implementation is immaculately tied to your efforts from earlier years. I have never played a farming game that made me so eager to find and plant as many of every plant my stamina can manage. + Artisan goods can be made as well, and though mostly it's just a way to make crops worth more money, the different mechanics of each crafting station, and the existence of multi stage crafting systems for the most valuable types of artisan good is my new gold standard. + Mining did not copy Stardew Valley's homework. There isn't much I want to say about it other than appreciating that they didn't feel the need to add combat and monsters to it. Mining with combat is fine, but without it they can focus on the exploration and puzzle solving aspect to it, which is a breath of fresh air. +/- Relationships are maybe the one area where I feel not enough is done. Living in a close knit community like this I find it strange that there aren't more ways to feel connected to that community. Seasonal festivals are nice, and I love the ability to invite people to dance (Though with how long the animation is, it's not really worth doing with someone you're not trying to romance), but something like occasional celebrations around the fire, or small birthday parties would give the wider cast more opportunity to show off their honestly excellent character writing. Rainy/snowy days where almost everyone huddles up in a couple buildings feels like a gesture toward that, but still only serves as a chance to give a lot of gifts. Child rearing is a welcome addition and feels like it has the care and attention of the team, but your spouse has the same dead end problem almost all games with this kind of system fall into. - My one negative is that it's not clear how valuable buffs actually are. They have a number associated, and a tooltip explaining what exactly each buff means, but not how the number is actually applied. For walking speed it seems like its #% movement speed increase, which makes food that gives walking speed 1 feel more like a joke than an actual benefit. For how short these buffs last, and with a buff that just increases how long other buffs last, it seems weird to me that they don't feel all that impactful. The accessory system is a really interesting alternative to having just regular skill progression, and I wanted to believe it was worth investing the massive amounts of time and resources, changing them out as my goals shifted, but until the very end it was hard to see any real effect.
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(I'm ESL) Played the 1.1 version now for 168hrs and after getting almost all the achievements, seeing all the endgame content and getting into a Union with a kid, I wanted to share my thoughts about Roots of Pacha. Getting into the game was easy for me (playing on PC + with keyboard and mouse) the tutorial was funny and helpful so I never got stuck. You could toggle the tutorial off but I wouldn't recommend it for the first playthrough. The first hour was a little overwhelming because there are so many NPCs to get to know and the daytime is somewhat short (15min). You can change that in the menu before you start a save (I figured this out bc of the Discord Channel and 20min daytime feel so much more relaxed for me now). You can literally look up everything in your notes, which was nice when I mixed up the names or quest givers. I spent a little too much time with the crops each day (quality of life hint for new players: don't sow all your seeds, trust me, you don't have enough stamina or time to care for all of the sprouts anyway and miss out on the fun parts of the game ) and fishing, animals or friendship did fall short for me (only had two small shacks with some boars and ostriches). I then decided to let the crops be crops and explored the caves because I love riddles and puzzles and had the best time with this decision. But I needed more food to keep the exhaustion at bay so I was back at the crop 'problem' (foraging for food didn't work for me - all I found was medicine or seeds and that doesn't help with stamina; I didn't think about meat (trapping) or fish (fishing) at that time and was too blind to see the wild fruit in the world that I could have used to cook juice) and luckily the game threw a solution at me right then bc you get a much better bronce watering can for 3x3 fields, and an invention that helps you even more with the watering problem. And I finally found the tree sprouts that your grandpa sells you - they are hidden away in a diffrent tab in his 'seed shop' and I just planted all the trees I could get my hand on. So back to the mines after ~20hrs playtime I had constantly shortage of building materials bc the quests from the Npcs got harder. And you have to upgrade your tools to unlock the rooms - luckily for me, I guess. So it got a little grindy, but not too much. After 7 ingame days and with better tools everything felt much smoother (maybe I pressured clearing of the quests too fast, idk) and I enjoyed exploring on my own again. I had a hard time figuring out some mechanics of the game (and still do, to be honest). Friendship is hard - keeping it up especially. Because it decreases when you don't talk to the NPCs. (there is an item that helps with this in the endgame - but it means giving up 1 of 3 accessoire slots). Same with the accessoires for extra stats that need 'bonding' time and then if you unequip them loose the bond after a while. This frustrated me pretty much because there was just nothing I could do to reverse it. (and I still don't like it bc it feels unbalanced). Fishing is confusing for me, I looked up a lot of tutorials for it and some say the fish reacts to your movement, or where you place your cursor; other say you should only fish with buffs and the best accessoiries... I still don't get the hang of it and think I never will get that achievement for "all the fish". Finding legendary or rare animals is actually locked - until you catch/tame a certain amount of this type of animal. I didn't know this and just had my huge herd at home (breeding by yourself is very rewarding) and that is something I thought was not intuitive. Why shouldn't I see a golden boar when I have 50 boars at home, you know? The tool bar: I always had an empty seed bag (so 0 seeds in it) in my 'free' hand so I wouldn't accidentaly swing my axe at someones face or gift away stuff I really needed. I didn't find an actual button to "unequip" everything and that is lacking imho. The romances: Well. You can actually date everyone at once which was confusing for me but an interesting mechanic choice. I gifted everyone of the singles at the same time, when I finished the mines and wanted to have a look at the romance of the game. What was really strange were the days when I just had one event after the other - especially the day when I just agreed to be in a union with Jag (literally marrying the guy) and then his 'brother' took me out stargazing 5min later on the same night. And proposed, too. I married Jag. And still date Garrek. Nobody cares. x,D But sometimes I wonder if Garrek would just have proposed 10min earlier, would my kid have spinach green hair? So yes, the union itself was sweet but after that the romance has a problem that most games have: I had the feeling after the wedding my spouse felt not as well written as before. Talking to him feels much more repetetive. And it was frustrating to see him leaving the house at 7am and return at 9pm... no dates. And in 1 year of marriage I only got one wild sunflower from this guy. (while the others are keeping sending me gifts in the mail ... confusing) I mean, why move in my hut at all if all you do is work, Jag? And getting the kid was... the wrong decision for me. You have to care for it on your own for ~10 ingame days (it screams at 3pm everyday so you have to look after it and stick around the house for so long) and then you could have a baby sitter - but those guys often didn't show up for me. Guess they don't like rain/snow/my kid, idk. So I kept looking after the kid by myself mostly. Sometimes a babysitter does show up for some time, sits in my living room and I try to keep track of the kid outside where sabertooth cats roam. There is room for improvement here, yes. At the moment Jillian (my daughter) is 2 months old and even bossier than my pet wolf (and he gives her wet kisses - while I can't even hug my own daughter. sigh.). I regret my life decisions even ingame, now. Why I still love to keep playing it: The decoration options are just mindblowing. You can literally place stuff all over the world and this is so much fun for me. And you can paint some items by yourself - so become a pixel artist today. Yay. Achievement hunting, too, the "all crop knowledge to 5" is kind of difficult. And I am trying to max out my accessoires and that is a lot of work because the gems are pretty rare or hidden in the mines. Taming and breeding animals. The mini games - racing and bones are really fun! I think it also has a lot of replaying potential. There are so many dialogues that I missed bc I was working on my fields in the first save alot. So I am glad I started another playthrough with the longer daysetting and a more relaxed playstyle. There was only one real 'problem' with the game I had and that was the windowed game kept crashing for me. But in fullscreen all is well. So the game is clearly a work in progress, which shows more in some parts of the game than others. But it already has so much content that it is worth the full price (25€ at the moment) imho. I would tell everyone that has a weak spot for pixel art or farming games to try this one out. More content should be coming up. The Discord Server is very helpful, the Wiki is okay and useful for gifting. There is a lot of potential here in the community, too and I really hope more people play "Roots of Pacha" and fall in love with it.
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This deserves to be regarded alongside Stardew Valley among the top farming sims. If Stardew is S-tier. Roots of Pacha is A-Tier. Better than Stardew: ================ - the sense of progress in regards to discovering tools / items / knowledge for farming - the festivals!! Pacha has seriously fun minigames and festivals in which you are an active participant - the mining system. Progression is puzzle-based and not just "go as deep as possible" - fast travel is much easier than SV - animal races twice a month! 😁 Worse than Stardew: ================ - the NPCs. Very forgettable. I've played one game year and can only name, like, 20% of the characters - romanceable NPCs. There's plenty to choose from but not a ton of cutscenes so it's hard to get to know them - raising animals. idk, it's harder and it's not my style. I'd rather just purchase an animal than charm it. - lacks the "infinity" of stardew. SV felt like you unlocked a whole 'nother game when you got to the desert, then again on the island. Pacha has various "biomes", sure, but I feel like after one game year I've seen all there is to see My wife and I love the game. It's online multiplayer and she is always asking me when we can play next 😅
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 17 November 2024 04:10 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 17 December 2024 15:17 |
| Steam price | 23 December 2024 20:25 |
| Steam reviews | 21 December 2024 21:51 |
Online players
242
Developer
Soda Den
Publisher
Soda Den
Release
25 Apr 2023
Platforms
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