Island Saver

Genre: First-Person Shooter / Educational

Players: 1

The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

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Review:

Island Saver is a Free-to-Play First Person Shooter that does both Free-to-Play and First-Person Shooters in ways that are actually kinda’ surprising. For a Free-to-Play game, it’s really unusual that this is a game that doesn’t seem to have any monetization whatsoever, except an optional $5 expansion for a game that seems to have a healthy amount of content to begin with. For a First-Person Shooter, this game is unusual in that it’s completely non-violent, kid-friendly, and actually Educational with a capital “E” – specifically, this is a game that is focused on trying to teach kids about environmentalism, as well as how financial stuff like banking and taxes work. An odd pairing to be sure, but certainly unique.

In terms of presentation, this game is surprisingly polished for a Free-to-Play game without monetization (I know I keep harping on it, but I kept looking for the catch and not finding it). While not anywhere close to the cutting edge, the game features a bright, colorful world with expressive and fairly well-animated characters, and appropriately cheerful music. It’s clear that a lot of love went into making this game.

As for the gameplay, the game does have enemies to shoot (purple blobs called “litter bugs”), but that’s not really the focus here. Instead, you’ll be using your character’s vacuum gun to suck up litter, squirt water to clean up pollution, and solve some minor puzzles to help clean up the place and assist the local animals.

It’s not challenging gameplay, the puzzles (if you can even call them that) aren’t particularly puzzling, and much of the gameplay honestly seems focused on busywork – vacuum up trash, take trash to recycling machine, vacuum up coins, take coins to bank deposit machine, wash, rinse, repeat (no, literally – you’ll be washing the landscape too). Still, the game manages to keep things interesting by giving players some interesting locales to explore and continues to add elements to the game as you continue.

I suppose the other question that should be answered here is how this game fares as an educational title, and I think the best way to address that is to say that the game aims for its educational content with some pretty broad strokes. The animals here are fictionalized cartoony “piggy bank” versions of the real deal, and while the game does introduce players to concepts like banking, setting up PIN codes, and how taxes help the community, the way these things are demonstrated is often highly simplified or symbolic. If you’re trying to teach these concepts to a young child, this may make for a decent introduction, but it would need to be followed up with explanation later to help put it in proper context.

Oh, and I almost forgot. Because I know some people will want to know this, this game does not use gyroscopic controls. However, it doesn’t really need them.

In the end, Island Saver isn’t without its faults – it’s not a challenging game, its gameplay comes in the form of a lot of busywork, and its educational content is cartoony and abstract to the point that it’ll require an adult to talk with their kid about this stuff for it to fully make sense. However, the game’s colorful world is fun to explore, and I can imagine that this would make for an ideal title for a youngster to introduce them to first-person perspective videogames. Plus, being absolutely free means there’s not much risk to getting it – if you don’t end up liking it, you’re no worse for the wear. If the game’s environmental theme interests you or you have little ones looking for something new to play, I’d say Island Saver is absolutely worth a look.

tl;dr – Island Saver is a Family-Friendly Free-to-Play First-Person Shooter that has you using a vacuum gun to suck up litter and spray water to clean up pollution. It has a surprisingly polished presentation, especially given that the game seems nearly free from monetization, and the game’s Educational elements act as a nice (albeit abstract) kid-friendly introduction to environmentalism as well as finance and the economy. Older players may find that the game lacks challenge and is filled with repetitive busywork, but for younger players, this is well worth getting.

Grade: B-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2020 Game Awards:

Winner:

Best Value – When it comes to value, it’s hard to beat “free”, but Island Saver even goes above and beyond that by offering a wonderful kid-friendly experience without any microtransactions (just an optional paid expansion), designed to teach youngsters about the importance of environmentalism and… er, banking, oddly enough. While I think all of the games on this list are a phenomenal value, nothing quite compares to this game, which is such a good value that I feel that every Nintendo Switch in a household with kids should have the game on it.

Runner-Up: Best Game for Kids and Casual Players, Most Overlooked, The “Wow, this game was way better than I expected!” Award

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The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

Island Saver

Genre: First-Person Shooter / Educational

Players: 1

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Review:

I wouldn’t be surprised if I was the first person who thought to test this game on Nintendo Switch 2, because I never hear anyone mention it. And that’s a shame, because it’s a rare example of a family-friendly free-to-play game that’s not loaded with microtransactions nor is it an online multiplayer game. Let’s see how it fares on Nintendo’s new hardware, shall we?

Well, I’ll start by saying that if there are any improvements to framerates or resolution, I’m not seeing them here. The game looked fine on Nintendo Switch, if a bit low in resolution, and it still looks okay on Nintendo Switch 2.

However, the load times have been massively improved here – on Nintendo Switch it takes 1 minute 4 seconds to load to title screen, and another 1 minute 10 seconds to load up a level. On Nintendo Switch 2, those times have been reduced to 36 seconds and 39 seconds.

So overall, not a game changing improvement, but it should definitely make this game easier to enjoy for younger players who are too impatient for long loading screens. If you have a youngster playing Nintendo Switch 2, you might as well give this game a try – it is free, after all.

tl;dr – Island Saver is a Family-Friendly Free-to-Play First-Person Shooter that has you using a vacuum gun to suck up litter and spray water to clean up pollution. It has a surprisingly polished presentation, especially given that the game seems nearly free from monetization, and the game’s Educational elements act as a nice (albeit abstract) kid-friendly introduction to environmentalism as well as finance and the economy. Older players may find that the game lacks challenge and is filled with repetitive busywork, but for younger players, this is well worth getting.

Grade: B-

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