An okay game. The graphics are kinda rough and many animals are hard to please. I Recommend it for mostly animal lovers.
1. The animals are easy to befriend
2.Immersive gameplay
3.Many different animals to interact and play with
4.Lots of well sized areas to explore
5.Seeing how the animals interact with each other
6.Unlockable magic plants
7.The fact that the challenges are optional
8.Multiplayer mode with up to four people
You befriend animals by at first feeding them. This is quite easy to do as almost all the animals in the game like to eat nuts,berries,pinecones and fruits which you find in abundance. Once you get to one heart with the animal, you must keep feeding it untill you get to heart level two.From that point you can now play with it by rubbing your hand cursor against it. If you play with an animal before it reaches heart level two,it's trust for you will go down. Eventually you will reach heart level three with they animal by either feeding or playing with it(or both). Once you reach that point the animal will move into the area. You must maintain your plants and animals and keep them happy. If enough happy energy(represented by green smiley faces)reaches the happy bar at the top of the screen it will eventually reach the padlock icon and you''ll have unlocked a new area of the forest. Sad energy however,(represented by red frowning faces) will make the happy bar level plummet. It's best to seek out the unhappy animal and satisfy it needs if you can.
Now for the cons.
1.While skippable some challenges need to be done to unlock some animals
2.Animals can get VERY hard to please
3.The difficulty of attracking some kinds of animals to the forest
4.Poor graphics
5.domestic dogs are one of the animal species
6.Birds cannot reproduce
As stated above some challenges need to be done to unlock some animals this is not a big gripe of mine thougth,as you usally have to do only half to quarter of the task to unlock the animal. Another problem is that I've had animals who are COMPLETELY HAPPY and the still emit sad energy! I think that might be a glitch. The hardest need to satisfy is family. I can under stand that the animal is lonely and needs a mate,but the need gets pressing pretty quickly,making them always upset. It gets even worst if you can't attract another animal of that species to the forest. Most of the animals are easy to attract to the forest,but some like weasels are hard to find. I'll put their favorite food squirrels and mice in the all over the areas they show up in (Foggy Creek and Grassy Glen) and they still won't come! In one game I was lucky enough to find a male weasel for my female and they had two daughters. But then the male got eaten buy an owl. Now I have three unhappy female weasel who all want mates that I can't find. In another game I was also able to get two weasels... that were both male! I have not been able to attract any other weasels male or female since then and now I have to males who can't get the mates they want. This also tends to happen with opossums and badgers. The graphics are okay. The trees and plants look pretty pixalated,even when you're close up to them. The animals can also look pixalated at times and pretty much everything else in the game. Knowing this is from EA I expected better from them. The addition of domestic dogs to this game also upsets me. Sure it has domestic cats,but I think cats would be more realistic as survivors in the wild. Now I know there are feral dogs ,but were not talking medium or large size hounds and retrievers,were talking TINY LITTLE LAP DOG TERRIERS WITH BOWS IN THEIR HAIR. I just feels like wasted some potential. They could have instead had river otters or mabey even mountain lions! It was like the programmers were to lazy to think of another wild animal! And plus birds can't mate! I may have complained about finding mates earlier,but it makes the game feel incomplete. It would be cute to see some baby chicks chirping in a nest. Plus mice can't mate too. Personally I think the programmers were being lazy again.
I recommend this game to children 6-12 (if your child is young be sure they are ready for the death of an animal in the game) and I recommend it for animal lovers like myself. The gameplay is fun and engaging and can be educational to! I just think it has a little wasted potential.