Survival

I was lured in by the cover art. It looked like a surreal, tropical island. In this game you spend the day fishing only to have your boat break down, leaving you stranded on an island. To leave you must fix your boat using materials found on the island.

The gameplay has its merits. There is a health meter which is always an exciting prospect in a game about survival, and I liked some of the scenery, such as the palm tree (I like palm trees in games that take place on an island). But if I am being realistic, implementation drags everything down. Consider:

> x boat
Hmm... it looks like there is something under the boat.

> look under boat
I don't understand your command.

Now, if I click on the link "Broken Boat" (this is Quest, mind you) to access the small menu of options for that object there is an option that says, "Look under the boat." Click on that and the game will let you look underneath, revealing a (Spoiler - click to show) hole poker. In fact, relying on the small menus was quite helpful. I learned that you need to (Spoiler - click to show) fight the bear and to poke the palm tree with the hole poker to get the sap.

Here is my advice: If you want to get anything out of this game USE THE LINKS. TAKE ADVENTAGE OF THE QUEST FORMAT AND CLICK ON THE LINK. Otherwise, you will probably quit out of guess-the-verb related frustration. Not that it eliminated every frustration.

If you try to go north while inside the cave the game says "It's locked! It looks like you need to press letters in the correct order." What is locked? Is there supposed to be a door? Are there buttons? The only thing (Spoiler - click to show) visible in the cave is the bear, and even when the bear is gone there are no doorways or barriers in the room description. Just as I was about to give up, I simply typed “none shall get out,” which was written on the bear after you defeat it. The back of the cave opened, and I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to continue playing.

Some implementation issues merely detract from the polish whereas others simply bring the gameplay to a halt. An example of the former is when the game exclaims that there are fish but when you try to examine the fish the game says there are none. Also, the description of the boat is, "Hmm... it looks like there is something under the boat," even after I (Spoiler - click to show) already retrieved the hole poker. These did not seem so bad. The roadblock I encountered was fixing my boat. (Spoiler - click to show) The back area of the cave has rocks, which seems to be the last material needed to repair the boat (I think). But when I tried to fix it with each material I would get these weird error-like messages and then the material would disappear from my inventory. Eventually I stopped there. It seemed like I was getting close to the end, but I could be wrong about that.

I like the simple puzzles and concept, but I am giving this one star because it is incredibly buggy. It has potential, it really does, but it needs testing and refinement before it can be a finished piece. If an updated version become available, I would love to play it!