Island Saver is a free-to-play game, designed to teach younger audiences the features of managing money responsibly. It’s an action adventure with a dash of platforming while in a first-person view. It’s actually got snippets of popular games in various genres, so that’s actually quite amusing for a kid friendly game, especially the first-person shooter aspect. The background of the game is that you are part of a team that goes around islands to clean up the litter and saving the bankimals. The free portion of the game has three islands, plus two additional islands that you can buy as DLC.
The premise is simple, once you arrive at each island, you then use your suction gun to suck up water and then shoot it back out to clean the goop from the island’s plants (and machines, ironically). The gun is also used to suck up litter, in the form of glass, paper and metal bottles / cans. You then spit these out into the recycling machines. Cleaning up will earn you currency known as doubloons, and you can then put them into a bank to earn interest.
Each island is split into various areas, and once you’ve cleaned up an area to a certain point, enemies will appear. These are known as litterbugs, and they can be one-shot with your water gun. There is no difficulty since you cannot die (the litterbugs can only throw goop that blocks part of the screen), and even the bigger ones only pollute the environment which you can easily clean up again. This leads to a fairly relaxed and stress-free experience. The story, while simple, does have a certain charm to it, especially with the litterbugs and how they’re resolved in the third and final island.
Interspersed with all that are the lessons that the game wants to impart onto its younger audience. It starts off with easy concepts like putting money into a bank and earning interest, then taking out a loan and paying interest. It distils the fluctuations of exchange rates to its simplest form. And of course, there is the environmental message with it encouraging cleaning up and not littering.
Thus, considering the edutainment angle, it’s surprising that the game is actually fun, albeit repetitive. Sucking all up the trash and then shoot water to clean up areas is addictive. Even the litterbugs that regularly spawn is only a minor annoyance, if that. Once you’ve cleaned up an area, bankimals will also start appearing. These are basically animals with a coin slot (like a piggybank), and feeding them enough of the food they eat will have them burst out with coins.
However, halfway through the first island, you’ll understand the gameplay loop and it’s a simple repetitive one. While there are upgrades and slight modifications to the formula, it’s basically the same thing multiple times on an island, then multiplied by three islands. Each island takes around two hours to complete, so that’s six hours total. What can drag the experience out is the fact that the later islands require backtracking, which is always pointless and just stretching out the game time.
The playable character has a few other abilities like being able to sprint, ride certain animals and access to a shop. The shop is just a glorified inventory menu, since you’ll get to certain points where you just need to buy an item to proceed. There are also collectibles scattered about, these take on the form of an egg, and are somewhat easy to find. The graphics is a simple cartoony style with bright colors, so it works well. The platforming feels shoehorned in though and are not great. It’s tough to make platforming in first-person work, and this game does not succeed. The jump can be unresponsive or you don’t know how far you’re jumping, so you’ll have to respawn quite a few times over the course of the game.
Overall, considering its edutainment nature and as a free-to-play game, Island Saver is surprisingly enjoyable. There are no heavy-handed monetization (only purchasable DLC, which is acceptable) and it doesn’t try to cram its message down your throat. The gameplay loop can become repetitive over time but it’s fun enough that you don’t burn out over its six hour length. There are definitely some rough patches, especially the platforming, but otherwise, Island Saver is actually a game worth playing if you have some spare time and just want to relax.
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