A treasure map: a voyage. The ocean sploshing happily at your makeshift raft. Then a ferocious storm! Shipwrecked, alone, starving, surely doomed.
Well, not exactly. The happy sploshing part, yes — and technically a shipwreck — but then you’re in for a calypso-tinged, cosy hangout with friends. Survival Kids offers a gentle change of pace in the fervour of the Switch 2 launch, and a jolly fun jaunt it is, too.
Developed by Unity — as in the game engine company, in its first foray into end-to-end game development — this is an update of a dormant Konami IP that goes right back to the Game Boy in 1999. That game, made available recently on Nintendo’s Game Boy app on Switch, was an early example of survival mechanics, including stabbing animals to death in a you-or-them scrap, before cooking up the flesh to eke out another day without starving to death. Over the years, through half a dozen or so sequels and spin-offs and a lengthy hiatus, the edges have softened, culminating in this gentle, cooperative exploration and puzzle game.
The setup is lighthearted. Yes, stranded in a shipwreck – but on the back of a giant turtle called a ‘whurtle’. Your mission is to fix up your raft and set off back home. However, each new voyage leads to another wreck on another whurtle – another level with the same mission to repair and escape. If that sounds repetitive, well, it really is – it’s whurtles all the way down. But, although solo play is available, this is fundamentally a multiplayer game, and cooperating and collaborating to complete the simple errands on the to-do list keeps everything fresh.
As for getting multiplayer set up, you have a few options: splitscreen for two players, online up to four, and an early example of Nintendo’s GameShare feature, where up to three players can play with a single copy of the game. For this last option, however, you are limited to a local configuration, where all the Switches are in the same room. Since the Switch 2 streams the game to the other consoles (including the original Switch if you’ve held on to one), the frame rate drops to 30fps, and some latency creeps in. Add to this the big black border around the play area on each device and it’s not an ideal way to play, but it’s passable.
In my testing, splitscreen on the telly was the way to go. Online with GameChat could probably be a good laugh, but I don’t have any friends (with this game, thank you) to test that. Even if you are set up for GameChat, I doubt it could compete with couch co-op, particularly because your ideal co-survivor is probably about 5-10 years old – more on that in a minute.
Anyway, however you recruit them, once your crew is ready to set sail with the game, the process of repairing your raft boils down to gathering scattered items and carrying them to the wreckage. Reaching those items requires a bit of light puzzling, such as casting a fishing line to grab a distant piece of machinery or blowing items into place with a leafy fan. Said fishing line and fan also need to be constructed by gathering items and bringing them to base camp. All in all, it’s a game about searching and fetching.
Experienced gamers may find the very basic actions a bit tedious after the first couple of islands. However, put Survival Kids in front of a newer gamer — in my testing, a six-year-old — and the novelty doesn’t wear off so promptly. In fact, it was a gleeful time through to the end of the game and beyond.
And the enduring fun wasn’t just because the ideas were new to my fellow strandee; more than that, he was able to enjoy them thanks to the very dependable and generous controls. Chopping trees, for example, sends wood flying about, and those little bits all need to be gathered and lugged around. Larger items need to be dragged, and everything bobbles about for some physics-based fun. It’s a recipe for disaster, really, since repetition plus fidgetiness equals agonising gameplay. But not to fear: a quick and reliable push of the ‘A’ button grabs whatever’s nearby with a delightful pop, and since you can only stack alike items in your hands, mashing ‘A’ will always gather the right resource from a pile as long as you start with the one you’re after.
The same holds for some simple platforming. The kids’ yelping bounds are a bit floaty and inelegant as jumps go, but the island parkour was clear and easy to execute, with a quick reset just in case, and no real punishment if you miss the target.
‘No real punishment’ could be the game’s motto, in fact. Working together completes tasks faster, but it’s not too slow on your own. You need to eat to increase your strength, but you won’t really suffer for running out. The simple fishing can be messed up, snapping your line, but there are always plenty more fish in the sea, so to speak.
Overall, there’s little resistance to completion, even if your partner doesn’t feel like doing anything constructive. Mine appointed himself the cook every time — whether food was needed or not — but we always got our raft sorted in the end.
Our rather dilly-dallying approach to island life made the game last about 12 hours for us. I’m confident experienced gamers could finish it off in half that time. There are star rewards to go back for on each level — for time gates and hidden items — but replaying the same level only amplified the tedium for me. We reached the last level to find it gated behind a 25-star requirement. We called it a day, and I spent an hour grinding stars on my own after bedtime so we could finish the game in the morning. That was the least fun part of the experience by a nautical mile.
Conclusion
Survival Kids is a thoroughly competent, cosy game of cooperative gathering and crafting. It’s not much of a looker, and its ideas aren’t mind-blowing, but it’s all good stuff thanks to its robust controls and easy-to-grasp loop. I’m not sure I’d want to be stuck with it on a desert island, but it’s good company for several happy hours with a friend – especially a less experienced gamer. If you plan to get shipwrecked with a little one and giggle your way through it, go ahead and add a point to the score.
