Of all the games I’ve picked up over the last year or so that will form part of Indie Fest 2024, which will eventually culminate in my Indie game of the year being decided upon, Beasts of Maravilla Island is one that has the biggest tinge of “Crap Fest” about it.
In that it’s a game that wouldn’t look out of place bundled in with those titles played surely for points… unlike others that have made the list like “The Wanderer: Frankensteins Creature” and “The Innsmouth Case” there isn’t anything that makes this really stand out from the crud I exposed myself to in previous years.
Distraint 2 is included as, along with a couple of other games I played last year, when the previous game was played as part of Crap Fest, it turned out to be a very pleasant surprise, to the point where I want to play the new title because I really enjoyed the first game… see also “Ashina: The Red Witch” from the developer of “My Big Sister” and “Just Ignore Them”.
With a guide of just under an hour this is a single session game… hopefully… the perfect weekend completion.
July 11th
Straight out the gates I’m going to mention here that the overall score has had 2 points deducted for a glitch that meant I had to complete the game twice for the full 1,000 points.
As I completed Level 2 one afternoon I saved the game, when I reloaded the next day it decided to start me maybe 1/3rd of the way through Level 3, which messed up the order of the cutscenes, so some additional objectives didn’t appear and, even though I completed the photo objectives, because they hadn’t been added the associated Achievements didn’t pop… when I retried through Chapter Select, the objectives appeared, everything was in the right place and order, but the photos for the objectives didn’t register as I already had them taken.
So, I was forced to replay, and I couldn’t just run through to the final level as there’s an Achievement for taking all the pictures in a single run through.
Second time through I make sure that when I reached Level 3, I continued to a point where it couldn’t glitch on me again, I have all objectives, almost all the pictures needed save for 7 or 8 to be taken later.
The game itself is simple enough, possibly more for kids though as it’s all cutesy and the puzzles aren’t difficult… it looks okay, the music is fine in small doses, after 20 minutes it starts to grate something chronic though.
Story wise you’re a young girl visiting an island her grandfather always used to talk about that she had assumed was made up for story telling purposes, and you wander through 3 Levels taking photos of the wildlife, flowers and insects etc before discovering that the jewel on the front of your Grandfathers journal was stolen from a creature, and this theft has meant that parts of the island are slowly being killed off.
When you realise this, you set off to return the jewel at the top of a tower on the final Level, guided by a Spirit animal in the form of a Stag… you need to take 4 pictures of this in the game, and you need to be careful as, if you rush round the environment, you’ll miss your chance then its replay the whole Level later to grab it.
Now all this is fine, it doesn’t outstay it’s welcome (the guide is under an hour, and there are a good few minutes intro at the start and a lengthy cutscene at the end you can’t skip so it could be done, if you knew where everything was in maybe 55 minutes… my second run has been much quicker as I’ve been able to skip several miscellaneous Achievements… playing fetch 20 times with one creature springs to mind.
In the end it’s scored 58 points once I’d deducted a couple for forcing the second play… nothing special… but not wholly awful either.