Review | Beasts of Maravilla Island

LifeisXbox’s Beasts of Maravilla Island review | Hello everyone, today we will be looking at a game I was really hyped to review! It’s name is Beasts of Maravilla Island, and it’s a game where you photograph beautiful fantasy creatures. Beasts of Maravilla Island is developed by Banana Bird Studios and LLC and published by Whitethorn Digital. I had a wonderful time photographing fantasy creatures, but you also learn about their behavior and need to complete little puzzles. So if you like chill games or would like to play a chill game with your daughter or son, please continue reading! This might be it!

Mika played Beasts of Maravilla Island for almost two hours on PC and Switch. This game is also available on Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, and Xbox One.

What we liked!

• Gameplay | I like the core gameplay of Beasts of Maravilla Island a hell of a lot. Just walking through a new and magical world, only a camera and an old journal from your grandpa with you… ahhh, sounds perfect to me. But there is more then just photographing! Making a picture is easy, just press E and you go to the camera view and then click with your mouse or press spacebar and tadaaah! But you can also make selfies in this game! Just press E and right-click and you’ll see yourself, then you can pick an emotion and BOOM, instagram fame! (if that exists there). You can also press Q in the game to whistle, and you actually use that more then I thought you would need to, which I liked. I especially liked the part where I needed to mimic the call of some animals to make them appear from the bushes, absolutely lovely.
• Cutscenes | Even though there aren’t many cutscenes, I was really impressed by the opening. It is fully voiced and looks stunning. It got me hyped for the game and that’s all you can really ask of an opening, so very well done. Later cutscenes are also very well done, but the opening is just special. In the game you play as a girl, she sometimes speaks to you on her journey, but that part isn’t voiced. It does however help you figure out what to do next, which was very helpful for a person that always gets lost… (not me I swear UGH).
• Journal | Let me just start by saying that the drawings in the journal are one of my favourite things in this game! It’s just art, not a little drawing or doodle, beautiful art. On top of that, the journal gives very handy info about the creatures you will encounter! I’ll give a screenshot so you can see!
• Music/sounds | With all the sound of the “monkeys” and waterfalls it truly feels like you are in a jungle. Sound queue’s where very well done and when I needed to listen to mimic them, it was hard, but well done nonetheless. I don’t know how they made the sounds for some of the animals but one of them in particular I will remember because they made such a cute sound. A pleasure to the ears, truly.
• Credits | You might be wondering: credits? Why is that in the good section. Well let me tell / show you! When you complete the game you will get the credits… With all of the pictures you took! I found it such an awesome idea. I know they couldnt fit all my pictures in there ’cause I take pictures of everything.. three times or something but yeah, loved it. Beautiful way to end your journey.
  

Somewhere between

• Story | I don’t want to be negative, not at all, since I loved every minute of this game. But the story is in my opinion very predictable. I won’t spoil anything but as soon as I saw a few pieces of the story, I knew how it would go. It might also be because it is quite a short game, sadly. I think you shouldn’t play this game for the story as a grown up, but maybe children will love it. This is just my opinion though, that’s why it is in the “somewhere between”.
• Looks | Im not quite sure what to make of the looks of this game. At first glance it looked like an old game. And in some aspects, it stayed that way. (for example the movement of characters and animals is very clunky.) But on the other side I could still very much enjoy some views. I must say that the jungle you start in isn’t the prettiest, it’s the part you get to after that. It reminded me of Avatar (the blue one) with all the glowing plants. I think it’s a matter of taste if you are going to like the looks, so I will try to show you in the screenshot below.

What we disliked

• I’m not done yet | I played the game for 90 minutes and it was already over. I had so much fun, I didn’t want it to end. If you want all the achievements it will be a little longer but I was still sad it was over, which is a good and a bad thing, of course. It does mean it was a good game, but please give me more!
• Broke my ankles and knees | So, at some point in the game you get to a huge temple with stairs leading up to the entrance. Well, I think I broke everything below my waist there. I tried going up and my legs went in my body and I couldn’t get up the stairs. I tried again, no succes. So I kept trying and eventually I got up, thank god. But I did not like that , for me: a casual game enjoyer, something so simple as walking up stairs, did not work.

How long to beat the story | 1,5 hours
How long to achieve 1000G | 2 hours at most
Similar with | Pokemon Snap

CONCLUSION

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