Dinkum

Dinkum is a life-simulation and light survival game set on an island soaked in Australian outback flavor, developed solo by James Bendon. You arrive with nothing, earn your licences from a bureaucratic NPC named Fletch, and gradually unlock the tools and permissions that let you farm, mine, hunt, fish, and build out a full town. The licence system is genuinely clever - instead of a skill tree, progression is gated by in-game currency spent on official permits, which makes expanding your capabilities feel like a tangible decision rather than passive levelling. Want to start deep-sea fishing before you can properly defend yourself from the local wildlife? That tension is real and mostly works. The world itself is procedurally generated per save, meaning your island layout, biomes, and resource distribution will differ from your friend's. Biomes range from dry scrubland to tropical coasts, and each brings its own critters, plants, and hazards. The fauna leans hard into Australian archetypes - wombats, emus, crocs, and things that will absolutely ruin your morning if you wander too far without decent gear. Combat is simple but not trivial; you'll need to actually prepare before pushing into harder areas, which gives the exploration loop a satisfying cadence. It's not a deep combat system, but it doesn't pretend to be. For a one-person project, the breadth is genuinely impressive. Farming has seasonal crop logic, animal husbandry has enough depth to keep you invested, and the town-building side lets you attract and house NPCs who expand available services. Multiplayer co-op is supported, and building a town alongside friends accelerates the mid-game nicely. The writing is minimal - this is not a narrative RPG, and if you come in expecting character arcs or branching dialogue, you will be disappointed. The NPCs are functional archetypes rather than people. Fletch exists to hand you paperwork. That's roughly the depth of it. Where Dinkum earns its Very Positive rating is in the pacing and tactile satisfaction of its systems. Mining feels chunky and rewarding. Fishing has a minigame with enough variety to stay interesting. Farming is calming without being brainless. The game never pads its runtime with filler the way some life-sims do - every mechanic you unlock tends to open a new layer of activity rather than just reskinning an existing one. There are rough edges: late-game town expansion can feel repetitive, some quality-of-life features took a while to arrive through updates, and the low-key writing means there's no overarching story to push you forward if the sandbox loop stops doing it for you. This one is squarely for players who love the "one more day" loop of cozy life-sims but want a bit more environmental danger and mechanical texture than the genre's gentlest entries. It's solo-developer work that punches above its weight class, released in full after a well-received early access run.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

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