At the end of May, only two weeks before the debut of the Switch 2, the original Survival Kids, a cult favorite from 1999, landed on the Game Boy NSO app. Then, on June 5, a brand new game in the franchise, also called Survival Kids, launched alongside Nintendo’s new hybrid console. Playing both games back-to-back, it’s obvious they’re very different, mechanically and structurally. The Game Boy title is an open-ended survival sim with light RPG elements. The Switch 2 game, meanwhile, is a low-stakes cooperative puzzle-platformer. Different doesn’t necessarily mean bad, however.
The premise in the new Survival Kids is a good one. Four curious kids rummage around a dusty attic and find an old tattered map. Feeling the call of adventure, the foursome boards a ramshackle boat and sets off into the ocean toward the unknown, only to be caught in a ferocious storm. Soon after they awake, marooned on a hidden, mysterious island with a lighthouse at its center. Their only way of escape: travel to several nearby islands, each set atop the back of a giant, friendly turtle called a Whurtle, and bring back Harmony Stones to amplify the power of the lighthouse, push the storm back, and identify a safe way home.
While the game’s setting is ripe for adventure and world-building, it doesn’t really go anywhere. The kids bounce from island to island while a narrator (voiced pleasantly by Marcus Brigstocke) hints at some ancient cohabitation between humans and Whurtles, and that’s about it. It’s all very superficial.
Survival Kids is much more invested in its gameplay loop, which incorporates crafting, exploring, platforming, and puzzle-solving. From an overhead, isometric point-of-view you will guide your kid across each island landscape, cutting down trees, breaking down boulders, hauling up fish, and collecting & manipulating all manner of objects to reach your goal. While this sounds fun on paper, in reality it’s rather tedious. The problem is simple: repetition. Too much of the game is spent redoing things you’ve already done.
Here’s how the typical island unfolds: you wash up on the back of a Whurtle and collect some logs, stones, and vines to build your camp. Then you track down an item blueprint and drag it back to camp. After using a few more resources to craft the item, you’re left with a fishing pole, fan, or umbrella, which you’ll use to explore further into the island, where you’ll find Resource Boxes, which demand additional ingredients. So you chop down more trees, chip away at more boulders, etc. Sometimes the path forward requires more stamina than you currently have, so you must return to camp and use fish, fruit, and vegetables to cook endurance-boosting meals. At certain intervals, the Whurtle beneath you will dive deeper underwater, causing the island to sink somewhat. At these points, you and your friends must pack up the camp, drag it to higher ground, and unpack it. This happens two or three times per island.
As a result, there is excessive repetition both within islands and across islands, since each one follows the same basic flow. Even the marooning process is the same every time. In fact, at one point the narrator glibly asks, “Tell me you’re gonna at least try and not crash that raft one of these times?”
It doesn’t help that there are no penalties for failure as you fetch, craft, and explore. If you fall into deep water, you simply rematerialize on dry land. If you deplete your stamina entirely, you can just grab a quick meal to refill it. This is not the sort of game where you become paralyzed by ingesting too many uncooked clams.
Fortunately, developer Unity (yes, this game was not only made in Unity but by Unity) partially tempers the feeling of monotony thanks to two important things. The first is the control scheme, which is accessible and simple. It’s incredibly easy to navigate the island, break down resources, and drag things around, solo or in a group of four people. You simply press A to grab a hold of anything nearby; and if you pick up more than one of the same thing, the game will automatically stack them. You never have to fight the controls in Survival Kids.
The other important thing is increasing puzzle complexity as you move through the game. After the first few islands, which are designed to show you the ropes, things start to open up. You’ll have to swap between items, dodge projectile fire from turrets, throw bombs at breakable walls, and manipulate items in interesting ways, for example sending tree trunks downstream instead of carrying them, or using updrafts to propel them to the cliff above. The puzzles never get truly convoluted or head-scratching — this is a game designed for a younger, less experienced audience, after all — but they are, at times, clever.
In the unlikely event you do get frustrated by a puzzle, you can always recruit a friend to help. In fact, if Survival Kids does anything exemplary, it’s in the area of multiplayer, due to all the viable options. You can elect to play locally in two player split-screen, online with up to four total players, or via GameShare, which allows the game owner to invite up to two additional players to join their session via a local wireless connection.
Whether you play solo or with friends, you can expect to spend seven to eight hours with the game. While that’s not a huge amount of game time, there are some reasons to revisit the magical world of the Whurtles after the credits have rolled. You can replay each island to beat par times and collect optional totems, and also unlock achievements and cosmetic items like outfits and hats. Whether you’ll have the energy to replay the game is another story. Due to its tedious nature, Survival Kids is really best as a one-and-done affair.
One of the reasons you might not bother to go back and unlock outfits is that they’re not all that appealing, and they rest atop some fairly clumsy-looking character models. While Survival Kids does some good things in the way of controls and multiplayer functionality, it fails to make a good impression visually. The cartoony graphics aren’t exactly offensive; they’re just uninspired and outdated, not to mention a poor way to show off the power of Nintendo’s newest system. The same goes for the game’s music and sound effects. It’s all very generic.
Survival Kids on Switch 2 is a middling game — not because it doesn’t follow the template of the Game Boy original exactly, but because it fails to leverage its rules and mechanics in interesting, engaging, and dangerous ways. There’s too much repetitive fetching and crafting, too many stops and starts, and too few situations that truly test you, physically or mentally. Playing through the game, I couldn’t help wonder what could have been if Unity had deployed these controls, crafting mechanics, and multiplayer options in a high-stakes open world where survival wasn’t guaranteed. As it stands now, it’s fine for younger and less experienced players, but not ideal for those seeking something more involved, challenging, and long-lasting.
Full Article – https://www.vgchartz.com/article/464996/survival-kids-ns2/
