| Product: |
Virtual Villagers: A New Home (DS) |
| Date: |
05/11/09 (76 review reads) |
| Rating: |
 |
Advantages: Quite fun, good attention to detail
Disadvantages: Quick to finish
Virtual Villagers DS
This game comes from the popular series on the PC, and now all three are condensed into one Nintendo DS game!
~~~BOX ART~~~
The box art is not anything special, but has slight influences from the PC version. It is a nice colourful cover, and tells you a bit about the game. I'm not sure that it would completely stand out on a shelf, nor do I think I would pick this up to look at.
~~~GAMEPLAY~~~
The premise of the game play is simple. Basically, some islanders have escaped from a volcanic eruption and settled on the island, and you have to watch over them, control them to get food, make huts, have babies and so on. It plays out in real time, so every hour is one year for them, and they will age too... and whilst you are not playing they will also age and carry on with their jobs... until they die.
The aim of the game is to solve all the puzzles and learn about the past of this mysterious island.
There are also mini games you can play to help your inhabitants gain skill as well as speed up the task, such as fishing, rain dance, sawing wood and many more!
~~~GRAPHICS~~~
Graphics isn't brilliant, but it has attempted to make this in 3D. Whilst everything isn't perfect, there is great attention to detail, especially in the inactive things your inhabitants might do, such as the children see-sawing, or your inhabitants thinking and wondering about life.. These don't contribute at all to the game play, but the fact that these are included and made well gives the game a humour and depth, and just make watching your villagers more fun!
~~~CONTROLS~~~
You are able to have control over what they do. You can set which aspect you want them to do (farmer, healer, priest, builder or parent) and they will keep carrying on with the tasks you set them. However, you can also manually pick them up and put them near an object of importance, such as a hut to get them to build, or to the sea to get them to fish.
Controls are not too difficult to master, although sometimes tedious to actually use, as you have to drag the screen as well as your people.
There is also a nice shortcut menu to get to different pages, such as puzzles, buildings, inhabitants in which you can find different information, such as the puzzles you have left to complete, the skills of your inhabitants and so on.
~~~DIFFICULTY~~~
It is not too difficult to play, although the most annoying thing is the spontaneous illness which kills inhabitants quickly. You need a healer on every part of the island to have a chance of saving them. If I don't freeze time overnight, I lose about 8 inhabitants to death when playing the next day, which is way too much!
There are quite a lot of puzzles, around 60 in the game, some of which are really easy to solve, others take more time. Overall, they are relatively straight forward and the clue and picture helps to hint what you have to do. The difficult part is mastering the skills your inhabitants need to solve these puzzles which can take some time.
~~~SOUND~~~
The sound is not really constructive at all. There are some nice sound effects, but I found them slightly annoying and hardly play with the sound on.
~~~OVERALL~~~
I would recommend this game for those who might like "Lost In Blue" or Civ games, although this one is slightly more passive, where you can just set them on their task and leave them be, caring for them only once a while... It is kind of like a Tamagotchi! Haha...
I completed the game within 3 days (well solved all the puzzles and reached the ending), so this is not a very long game at all. It is a nice short burst of fun for those who can't keep at a game for very long, but for those who like in depth games, this is not for you.
The ending is also not very satisfactory, short and unfulfilling and more targeted at a younger audience.
Summary: Not for everyone
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