3.5/5 ★ – administrator's review of Island Saver.

My kid and I were perusing the PS4 store for free games and came across Island Saver. It looked age appropriate and was a first person game. He had only played platformers (2d and 3d) and a racing game on the PS4 and I thought this might be a good introduction to the first person perspective, something he could play to figure out the controls. I was expecting trash. It isn't trash. You know what, this is a pretty solid game. And I say that accounting for all metrics. Understand however that I am rating it for its purpose. It isn't going to win GOTY or anything, but it set out to achieve a particular goal (that being educational regarding money and general finance basics, with a target audience of children, which is a hard thing to pull off) and it generally succeeds at this whilst being a videogame. It is developed by Stormcloud Games, a small Scottish studio, and published by NatWest. Yeah, NatWest, you know, that bank in the UK that's pretty well known for having old tech and a web bank experience that looks like it hasn't been updated since 1996? Yeah, that bank. Wait, A bank?! It is, at its core, a Proper Game. By that I mean it ticks all the boxes in a consistent and well managed way - Throughout the short experience you're constantly learning new gameplay tools and techniques and actively using them from then on. In fact this game has more gameplay features and tools than most other games, the amount of stuff you can do is pretty impressive given the scope of the game and what its purpose is. You're given your mission - clean up areas that are covered in trash - and retain this basic objective throughout the entire game. As you progress you learn and develop more skills and minor objectives. Financial basics are taught via this gameplay development, though some areas on this front could be improved, for example the Loan Shark is a quick "gotchya!" moment but it would be of benefit to spend more time here and really flesh out the concept and consequences. In fact, the whole game would benefit from being a bit longer. In many games, progression is skill based, perhaps you level up. But here you're thrown new information and gameplay features constantly, which is pretty great for an adult who enjoys developing gameplay, but with their target audience being kids I can't help but think that it would be a bit overwhelming for a lot of the younger audience. It's definitely a game to play alongside a young child who already knows FPS controls. Having to learn the FPS controls and concepts as well as the different things to do to progress the game proved a bit much for my own offspring, but we will revisit it later. Anyway, trying this game out with the kid intrigued me enough to download it and play it as an adult. I wasn't expecting anything amazing, I just wanted to see where it went. It's an exploration game composed of three islands, which you explore in a mostly open-world-esque way. You must clean each area of trash that has piled up somehow, cleaning plant life of some oil-like substance, at which point a monotone animal spawns (resembling a piggy-bank, just... not always a piggy) which must be fed and, when full, produces currency and gets all kinds of colourful. Once you've done enough of this, you move on to the next area to do the same, though often with a new modifier in place (such as planting seeds, or building utilities, tax, loans, or currency exchanges.) The first island teaches you some finance basics and sets the basic gameplay up, the second island adds some challenge and highlights (far too briefly) where money stuff can go wrong in the form of a loan shark. The third island brings with it a slightly bigger challenge bump in managing your money and the complexity of each area requiring more careful exploration. It also throws in more frequent backtracking, yet still manages to introduce new concepts to the player throughout. It's pretty much a classic, standard game, it doesn't do anything really wrong, and it does help players understand money and how to use it effectively. There's even a bunch of cosmetics you can buy to decorate the animals you've saved. These have no purpose but do cost money, which is a resource that can dwindle to nothing quickly and shows how money can be spent on things that aren't required, but can be fun (just be careful to not spend everything!) Luckily there is a way to make money outside of the regular gameplay loop by selling foodstuff, but this is touched on once and never mentioned again. This is another area they could have expanded on somewhat and developed into a gameplay loop of its own. Each area, and each island, can be completed fairly easily, but there's additional stuff to do which contributes to a percent-completed tally you get on the level select screen. There's some exploration needed as some collectables are a bit hidden, though almost all are fairly obvious - given this is a kids game the challenge here feels appropriate. Achieving 100% is pretty easy (as you would expect) but is also rewarding. Finding that last bit of trash hidden away by that tree root you missed the first three times you searched the area gets the Dopamine going. There's an option in the settings to turn off highlights - these make missed trash and stuff glow with a red outline through objects and the scenery, making things easy to find. I would suggets perhaps leaving this on for kids but as an older gamer, turn this off. It makes it far too easy. I want to quickly shout out the unnecessary features in this game, the little bits of attention to detail that really don't make any difference but show a clear passion from the developers. There are some things in the game that they've bothered to add which are entirely pointless, for example there is one fruit that the Kangaroos eat which is boomerang shaped. When you shoot food it just... flies forward. The boomerang food though? Nope. This does exactly what you think it will - it flies off and curves around. Why?! Why bother with this?! It's fantastic :D The sounds design is pretty decent too, if basic. There's a few music tracks in there which are really good, I really liked the Wolf Peak music. There are two DLC available for this free game which cost a small amount of (real) money. I'm pretty tempted to get them to get all the achievements and to see if they expand on any of the established features, but for now the game is at 100% and I'm pretty glad I gave it a shot. The only bug I noticed, aside from getting temporarily stuck in terrain, was a description about using your tool after an upgrade which was copy/paste from a previous popup and mentioned things that were no longer appropriate. Everything else was a surprisingly well constructed experience for kids. I'm glad it exists, good job to Stormcloud Games and... Can't believe I'm saying this... Good job to NatWest for publishing this. Overall, if you want a short and sweet little fun kids game to bump your completed game number, give it a go. This is what innocent games should be - short, quirky, fun, full of features and tools, with a clear passion from the developers behind it. I can see this game getting a sequel, where the story is developed and the features are explored more and dug into. I might email them and see what they say about it...