~ Alba : A Wildlife Adventure ~
āEven the smallest person can make a big difference. Join Alba, as she sets out to save her beautiful island and its wildlife. And possibly start a revolution.ā
Picture this ā You are two years old, on a sunny island with your grandparents. Your grandpa wants you to take a picture of him and grandma together and gives you his phone to use. You do your best to aim at them both and actually end up taking a picture of a rare Lynx in the background. Gramps is thrilled!
Roll on 10 years, you are back on the same island visiting the grandparents once again. Grandma tells you go to and play until food is ready so you start to wander around the island talking to everyone you can find. You double check on the Paella and then make your way to the beach with your best friend after hearing a sound. The sound? A stranded dolphin caught in a load of netting! One villager round up later and the dolphin is back in the water and thankful for the help <3
From this you and your counterpart create the AIWRL ā The Alba and InĆ©s Wildlife Rescue League!
The next few days are spent saving goo covered squirrels, fixing birdhouses and renewing tourist animal watcher signs whilst collecting signatures to stop your beloved nature reserve turning into a rich manās hotel site!
Only by restoring the reserve and helping out the locals do you have a chance in getting all the signatures you need in time ⦠Are you up for the challenge?
An adventure of mystery, exploration, exploitation and education, āAlba ā A wildlife adventureā is an adorable animal collector game with some big messages packed inside it. After all, how else do you get people to care about the environment and raise awareness of those trying to destroy it for selfish needs? Make it cute and throw in a ton of collectible achievements of course.
So how does it work? As Alba, you have free reign of the Island to run around with your grandmaās phone that has a wildlife collector app on it. Using this app, you āscanā every living thing you see with your camera and fill out your āFauna MediterrĆ”neaā- Your wildlife guidebook.
Only once you have completed certain tasks and hit certain milestones will the rarer animals appear, but even some of the more common beasts can be hard to find if youāre looking around blind like I was (No I still canāt find the common Kestrel, leave me beā¦)
Now I have to admit, as much as I love the low poly art style of most games, some donāt quite render too well, especially when put on a bigger screen. Alba however looked stunning in the simplistic art style running through my steam link onto my Sky Glass and my controller responded fluidly. Being able to lounge back and just wander around discovering all there was to see was therapeutic in its own way, and my toddler certainly enjoyed watching me do it - Extra points for allowing mum chill time along with child distraction all in one!
Another point I find kind of neat is that, if you decide to progress the story but havenāt found everything yet, you can carry on your saved game after the āendā and go and get that 100% completion. I only wish it would transfer through as steam achievements, albeit it purely for bragging rights and a way to say ālook mum I managed to focus on something till the end!ā. Currently there are only 9 steam achievements, and all of these are linked with the main story. Thereās nothing wrong with in game only achievements, I just like showing off my achievement badges on my steam profile ⦠it makes me feel successful in something, even if it is only in fictional worlds!
Anyway, enough of that. 14 languages and a couple of fairly accommodating settings pages later, the only real gripe I have is that there is no windowed Fullscreen. It gets kind of annoying when every time you click out of the game everything minimises, which is especially annoying if youāre in the middle of big picture mode and streaming to another device. Apart from this, your settings are pretty much standard.
To sum up ā Would I play it again? Probably, but itās one of those that once you played it through, you wouldnāt be looking to replay it until sometime in the future when you need a chill break from the backlog of games youāve got going on. Also, I donāt normally comment on price, but if youāre going against the pound per hour of play standard, Ā£13.49 (at time of writing) is probably a bit much for a game that could be completed in a couple of hours by someone who is playing without the curse of being squirreled by everything in sight. Even with this, I finished (and near 100%) in 8 and a half hours ⦠Take from that what you will.










