Survival on a mysterious island

Reviewed by Anasazi on September 03, 2006  |  report this review

This game may not be for someone looking for a lot of fighting action. To me, the little activities you do to survive (digging for potatoes or shellfish, fishing, setting animal traps, grabbing snakes and lizards off the ground, picking strange mushooms,collecting firewood etc.) were quite addictive. The first part of this game is all about survival. I admit I died a couple times in the beginning. It doesn't help that time goes by quite quickly and your "needs" meters (hunger & fatigue) go down pretty quickly as well.

You are on an island with a girl who is virtually blind (your fault---you stepped on her glasses). She stays in a cave and cooks the food you bring, making it edible, or more nutritious and thus enhancing your chances of not starving to death. She'll also build you baskets and weave rope (to make animal traps). You have to make sure the fire in the cave doesn't go out, or she won't do a thing. Sometimes you have to lead her to other parts of the island when the two of you are needed to figure out a puzzle together.

Exploring the island will be difficult at first. Most of your day will be spent looking for enough food for the two of you to survive. After a while, you'll learn how to make things (like storage shelves, better beds, a raft,tools etc.) that will make surviving a little easier, and help free up some of your day to do some island exploring.

Once you start to really explore the island, you'll discover that you aren't the only ones there... I won't say any more about that.

There are some interesting (but frustrating) puzzles to figure out, and the game makes good use of the DS touch screen. I would have liked it more if the time didn't flash by so quickly. I guess that's part of the survival aspect.

One last thing. If you complete the game all the way through, you'll be able to play it again as the girl. I haven't tried that yet.

I gave this game 3/5 stars mostly because I kept going back to it for hours at a time.