Alba: A Wildlife Adventure Review - A Good Deed

Publisher: ustwogames

Developer: ustwogames

Rating: 4+

Reviewed on: PC

Also on: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, iOS

Alba is an adorable young girl who can’t wait to spend a vacation with her grandparents on a scenic Mediterranean island. However, things take a turn for the dastardly when the small town’s mayor partners with a shady building developer to construct a massive resort on the site of a beloved nature preserve. Armed with her trusty smartphone, Alba embarks on an altruistic quest to photograph the island’s wildlife to remind residents of what’s truly at stake and garner enough support to oppose the resort’s development.

Alba: A Wildlife Adventure is a wonderfully charming experience from Ustwo Games, the team behind the Monument Valley series. Instead of challenging players with M.C. Escher-style puzzles, it mellows them out with a relaxing, feel-good experience designed to promote conservation in an entertaining manner.

 

You spend much of your crusade taking photos of wildlife, and it’s a lot more fun than it might sound. Alba taps into the Pokémon Snap-like excitement of hunting down a critter, lining up that perfect shot, and filling out her wildlife journal. I found myself anxious to photograph every creature, and dozens of animals await Alba’s camera eye, some rarer than others. My excitement dulled over time, however, because so many of the animals were birds.  

To lure some animals into the open, players must clean up the environment by collecting garbage or repairing fixtures such as birdhouses. It’s nothing fancy or complicated, but there’s an undeniable satisfaction in removing a pile of trash and watching a flock of ducks swoop in to enjoy the now-tidy area (and thus providing more fodder for your camera). The photos you take are implemented in other fun ways, such as replacing the images on weathered trail markers, or impressing an equally nature-conscious park ranger. 

Overall, the goal is to collect 50 petition signatures by the end of the week. Don’t stress, though: You can end any day at your leisure, and I appreciated the allowance to take my time. Capturing photos and cleaning up pays off in signatures, as does fulfilling simple tasks by the town’s colorful residents. These uncomplicated tasks range from finding a lost dog to convincing a woman to sample the latest ice cream flavor. That simplicity might be an indictment in other games, but Alba’s breezy atmosphere makes cruising through the fluff more relaxing than boring.

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The small island makes it easy to check off the game’s entire to-do list, a task I felt compelled to do even if it’s not entirely required. Plus, the extra running around provides more opportunities to watch Alba sprint with her arms out in airplane mode, which always succeeded in making me say “aww.” And amid this playfulness, the game succeeds in promoting conservation without being too preachy. 

Alba: A Wildlife Adventure reminds players that happiness can be found in supporting worthy causes bigger than yourself. It feels nice to play a game about actively improving the world, and it does so with skill and charm instead of cringe. It’s the video game equivalent of sneaking vegetables into a tasty smoothie. This is one good deed that shouldn’t go unrewarded

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Score: 8

Summary: Alba: A Wildlife Adventure is a lighthearted and enjoyable lesson on the importance of conservation

Concept: With your trusty phone and can-do attitude, restore and preserve the natural beauty of a Mediterranean island endangered by corporate development

Graphics: Vibrant colors and doll-like character models make this easy on the eyes. Watching Alba’s running animation go from skipping to imitating an airplane is heartwarming

Sound: The Spanish-influenced soundtrack conveys the culture and serenity of your surroundings

Playability: Taking photos of animals is a cinch, and winds up feeling more exciting and gratifying than you’d expect

Entertainment: Enjoyable gameplay, charming writing, and a chill atmosphere promote an important message without beating players over the head with it.

Replay: Moderate

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Ratropolis Review – Real-Time Rategy

Publisher: Cassel Games

Developer: Cassel Games

Reviewed on: PC

The deckbuilding genre, once relegated to the physical tabletop, has seen explosive growth on the indie PC scene in recent years. Now, skilled developers are mixing, mashing, and combining traditional deckbuilding mechanics with other genres. In Ratropolis, Cassel Games successfully integrates card construction with city-building and defense to create a charming strategy mix. The resulting amalgamation is a satisfying soiree of rodents, robots, and giant ducks that keeps you coming back game after game. Your army of adorable mice and machines must restore the glory of the ratropolis! Yes, that’s like a city for mice.

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The goal is simple: You must survive 30 waves of onslaught as you build up a city. To that end, you select a main commander mouse that dictates what cards are available on each run. Each mouse has a variety of strategies to employ, and while you start with basic loadouts like the military-oriented general and the money-laden merchant, later unlockable characters like the scientist, shaman, and naval officer add many timing considerations and more advanced foibles to the game. 

Each run starts simple and fresh, with you defending your fledgling ratropolis from two different lanes. As you begin adding cards to your deck, you cycle through economy boosts, troops, and buildings. Each class plays differently, and the unique commander mechanics keep the experience crisp when it could otherwise get bogged down. For instance, the merchant’s military units are quite powerful – but they only stick around for so long after they’re paid. The scientist can morph and mutate troops, and shamans collect the souls of fallen units. The action takes place in real time, though the assault pauses when you’re looking through cards to purchase. It’s a fun and frenetic mind-teaser to play all your cards, draw a new hand, and keep blasting through your deck. In addition to having different archetypes with their own special cards and abilities, you can also play in multiple biomes like deserts, coasts, and forests each with their own sets of power ups and enemy types.

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Cycling through cards, pruning weaker options from your deck, and hoarding resources is interrupted by random events that often force you to make tough choices. Will you sacrifice some of your unit cap or all your gold to a mouse insurrection? These random happenings offer up choices that can have big impact. During one run I even had a special event happen that funneled all the enemy forces into a single lane of attack, making it a much easier defensive endeavor than fighting on two fronts. Combined with the variety in cards, builds, abilities, biomes, and hero choices, the random elements in the game feel tightly tuned toward letting you have plenty of different experiences that all feel fair, even if you get smashed by some barricade-hopping pirates or sleep-inducing sirens.

After each run, you’re awarded points that unlock new cards and advisors (essentially buffs that can be discovered during a run to help you out), which allow you to dive into additional strategies and try new things. Want to try a run that focuses on casting spells or just constructing tons of defensive structures? Unlocks help you out and offer incentives to keep playing your favorite classes, explore outside of your comfort zone with others, and keep you plodding on wave after wave. Once you’ve mastered the standard mode, you can begin exploring ascending pollution ranks, increasing levels of difficulty that add more challenging foes and other quirks to play around, like restricting your building space. Despite getting repetitive after I mastered core tactics, I had a great time pushing forth again and again, many hours after my first few victories.

Ratropolis has that ethereal “one more game” quality where the clock vanishes as you pour hour after hour into your feisty mice companions. When you lose a cool flame tank or a giant hatched duck lord, it’s a bit sad, but there’s always another game right around the corner. As more alchemic creations spawn from the deckbuilding surge, Ratropolis offers a lot of interesting and stylish entertainment for lovers of multiple brain-busting genres.

Score: 8.5

Summary: A satisfying romp as you restore glory to your rodent empire, defend against waves of flavorful foes, and recruit colorful companions.

Concept: Survive and thrive as you build a rodent-filled city and hold back waves of weasels, snakes, and other dangerous town-wreckers

Graphics: Stylish and sometimes adorable, the cartoony mice are entertaining to watch as they wander the village and battle threats

Sound: Adorable little mouse barks and quips as they battle endless tides keep you engaged from wave to wave (with help from a solid soundtrack)

Playability: The basic mechanics are easy to grasp, though don’t be discouraged if you lose while learning the ropes

Entertainment: Beating back the tide with a variety of mouse-related strategies is an enjoyable romp

Replay: High

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Super Meat Boy Forever Review – Hardcore Hurdling

Publisher: Team Meat

Developer: Team Meat

Rating: Teen

Reviewed on: PC

Also on: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch

A decade ago, the original Super Meat Boy released into what almost feels like a different industry. Team Meat's hardcore platformer was at the forefront of the modern indie renaissance; games like Super Meat Boy helped show that even small teams of dedicated developers could make a big mark on the gaming landscape. A few years later, Team Meat announced the follow up, Super Meat Boy Forever, a pseudo-sequel that would take Meat Boy into the world of autorunners. Naturally, this raises a few questions: can Team Meat distill Meat Boy’s pixel-perfect platforming into a game where players are limited to a single input? And, does Super Meat Boy Forever have any chance of leaving the same kind of cultural mark on the industry as its forerunner? Now that I’ve played the game, the answers are clearly “Surprisingly yes,” and “No chance in hell.”

Because Super Meat Boy Forever is an autorunner, Meat Boy takes off running the second you press start, and you can’t control the direction of his movements or his speed. This might sound like it would simplify the action and neuter Meat Boy's difficulty, but that isn't the case. While this is technically a simple game, it’s far from easy. Given Super Meat Boy Forever’s streamlined action, Team Meat has put extra focus on precision platforming, setting up a series of harrowing obstacle courses that force you to carefully time your jumps. There were a few times I wished I had a little more control over Meat Boy, but, for the most part, I quickly forgot about his limitations once I was sliding under buzzsaws and bounding up walls.

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This Meat Boy is called “Forever” because its levels are procedurally generated, meaning you can theoretically play the game endlessly. Procedurally generated games often lack that hand-crafted feel, but Super Meat Boy Forever’s levels flow seamlessly together in ways that usually feel natural. Each level is composed of fragments taken from a pool of over 7,000 bite-sized platforming sections, which means that every player gets a unique experience. After I finished one playthrough, I generated a new set of levels and was surprised by how different they felt.

Even without procedural generation, Super Meat Boy Forever’s action evolves as you progress. In one set of levels, I dashed through storms of falling glass. In another, I used Meat Boy’s dash punch to move blocks across the screen, creating new platforms. I particularly enjoyed the levels featuring pickups that allow Meat Boy to teleport through walls. Each new set of levels emphasizes different obstacles, which continually kept me on my toes. I was genuinely surprised by how fresh the action felt throughout, and the game was throwing new mechanics at me up to the end.

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Super Meat Boy Forever’s controls are generally superb, but my one complaint has to do with Meat Boy’s ability to punch enemies. When you press the jump button twice, Meat Boy dashes forward and slams his oversized fist into any helpless enemy standing in his way. The critters don’t pose much of a threat, and usually serve to help Meat Boy cross large gaps; Meat Boy’s punch resets after it connects with an enemy, meaning he can stay airborne as long as his fist is flying. This mechanic is a lot of fun, and I appreciated having a few enemies to whack around. Unfortunately, Meat Boy’s jump and punch are tied to the same button, so trying to jump as you touch the ground makes it perilously easy to throw a punch off the side of a cliff instead. Given the precise timing needed to complete many of Super Meat Boy Forever’s challenges, having punch and jump on separate inputs could have prevented a lot of irritating mistakes.

Super Meat Boy Forever’s simplified controls produce a bit of frustration, but this is a game that rewards pushing through the pain for the thrill that comes with completing a harrowing platforming sequence. My thumb grew numb, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to play more. In fact, on some levels, I died over a hundred times, but I rarely cared because Super Meat Boy Forever’s respawns are mercifully quick, its checkpoints are short, and its bite-sized platforming sequences are a total rush.

Score: 8

Summary: Super Meat Boy Forever’s simplified controls produce a bit of frustration, but this is a game that rewards pushing through the pain for the thrill that comes with completing a harrowing platforming sequence.

Concept: The evil Dr. Fetus kidnapped Meat Boy’s kid so our blood-soaked hero must platform through a series of deadly obstacles and rescue his whippersnapper

Graphics: Simple and crisp, Super Meat Boy’s art design is zany and gross – but in a fun way

Sound: This metal soundtrack isn’t nearly as good as the original’s chiptune beats, but it gets the job done

Playability: The autorun functionality places the focus on a series of exceedingly challenging platforming sequences, but the jumping around feels great

Entertainment: Like the original, Super Meat Boy Forever tests your resolve, but it’s easy to jump back into the action and the thrill of success is worth the endurance

Replay: Moderately High

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