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.