Alba: A Wildlife Adventure

Genre: Action-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Alba: A Wildlife Adventure is a family-friendly Action-RPG released on PC and mobile devices in 2020 and ported to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2021. In this game, players take the role of the titular Alba, a young girl visiting her grandparents on a small Mediterranean island who joins her young friend in a quest to save the island’s nature preserve from a wealthy developer and an ambitious politician who are aiming to turn it into a luxury hotel. To do so, she’ll be collecting signatures on her petition, helping the local townsfolk, doing her part to beautify the town, and taking lots of photographs of local wildlife on her phone.

The world of the game might actually be considered Open-World, but it’s a bit small for that. You’ll have free reign to explore where you want, within Alba’s very limited means – she is, after all, a very young girl, but more on this later. As you explore, talk with the island’s residents, and complete tasks, you’ll gain access to more abilities. Fetch a doctor to tend to a sick animal and you’ll get a medkit to help other ailing animals. Make enough progress on other tasks and you’ll get a toolkit to repair bridges, birdhouses, and other broken wooden structures (not very realistic for a young girl, but still nice, regardless).

Everything you do in this game ties back to the central goals – cleaning up and repairing the place brings back more animals, and posting their photos to public boards brings more people out to see them, which can in turn give you more opportunities to gather signatures. It’s a good way of ensuring that there’s a fair amount of variety while still keeping the game focused on its core goals.

While the gameplay is quite nice, perhaps a bigger part of why Alba: A Wildlife Adventure works so well is because it is simply adorable. The game uses simple but colorful and appealing 3D visuals for its world and characters, only a little undermined by pop-in on the Nintendo Switch. And while the occasional bits of instrumental music give this game a great local flair, the sound is mostly filled with animal and nature noises, which fits the game quite well and does a great job of building atmosphere.

I do have two major complaints, however. The first is that Alba herself is a pretty pathetic explorer. It’s understandable, she’s quite young, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating that her walking pace is frustratingly slow, she can’t jump, and she can’t climb. It’s maddening when she’s stopped by a small waist-high fence or a few rocks that seem like they should be passable, and it’s agonizing trying to get from place to place when her tiny legs take seemingly forever to bring her there.

The other problem is another bit of realism that doesn’t make for great gameplay. The majority of the wildlife you’ll encounter in this game are birds, and it can be difficult to judge at a glance whether a bird is one you’ve seen before or one you still need to snap a picture of – making out tiny details of small, fast-moving creatures in a short amount of time is not at all easy, when some of these creatures look far too similar to others. Again, this may reflect the reality of the creatures these are based on, but it makes for an added layer of frustration you don’t get from a game like, say, Pokemon Snap, where it is extremely easy to tell the difference between one Pokemon and another.

Despite its frustration, Alba’s adorable presentation and its variety and fun, relaxed atmosphere still make this an enjoyable game, and a great one for showing kids the value of taking care of your community, environmentalism, and how even a young kid can help to make the world a better place… just as long as there’s not a small fence in her way.

tl;dr – Alba: A Wildlife Adventure is a family-friendly Action-RPG where players take the role of a young girl snapping photos of wildlife and helping to beautify a small island community to save a wildlife preserve. This game has a lovely presentation, with a good variety of things to do, though Alba herself isn’t a very capable protagonist, which causes a fair amount of frustration. Still, if you’re looking for a relaxed game about nature and photography, this is a great choice.

Grade: B

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