Birthdays the Beginning on Switch

Another title that had my attention when it released on PS4 is coming to the Switch. That’s why I love the console so much: if you want to play handheld, you’ll eventually get all the good games that weren’t on a Nintendo console before!

Birthdays the Beginning is coming to Switch under the name Happy Birthdays in Japan on March 29, 2018 for 5,799 yen. And I’m pretty sure it will reach our shores too at a later date, as nowadays most games do ( or am I just hopeful?). 

At the time of release for PC and PS4 I was impressed at the happy and colourful visuals and as you know, I love a good Sim game. So when I read this morning that it will make the leap to Switch as well, I decided to check the reviews out.

First of all, this is what the game is about:
” A garden game in which players create cube-shaped worlds that give rise to diverse and unique lifeforms. Shape the geography and alter the temperature of each world to create the conditions for life and witness the birth of an entire ecosystem.” 

The reviews weren’t exactly raving. The basics of the game are very interesting though. It’s a god game in which you manipulate a cubic world in order to create new lifeforms. You begin with the story mode, in which you’re tasked with charting the evolutionary path from single celled organisms to modern humans.

I’ve read that the story isn’t very impressive, nor important to the gameplay, but that the game can be quite engaging. You’re tasked with making new creatures on the evolutionary tree. Sounds just like I might like that. This is what Pushsquare wrote about it in their review, giving the game a 5 out of 10.

You must raise and lower the landscape in order to create suitable habitats for the various flora and fauna. Over time you need to fine tune your world so that the creatures populating it can evolve and diversify effectively. Changing the terrain also alters the air temperature and the moisture levels, both of which can have a significant impact on the survival of the different beasts and plants.

When you come to the dinosaur age, for example, you need to ensure the world is suitably hot enough. Drastically changing the world and its temperature can cause mass extinctions, but you will occasionally need to do this on your quest for completing the timeline. Each species has different requirements for birth, and you’ll need to pay attention to some of these details, too.

Pushsquare was more impressed with the story mode then with the free-play mode because of the goals offered. Waiting times, before anything happened to the cubed cradles of life, are too long and can get boring. And the way that all the info they give can be a bit overwhelming. The good thing though is that you can tinker to your hearts’ content to get it right.

Having read those reviews, it seems a good thing that the Switch version will feature drastic system improvements compared to its PlayStation 4 and PC counterparts. This includes easy-to-understand navigation, such as the conditions and places where creatures are born, game tempo improvements, and new animal(s).

Now let’s just hope that my prediction of the game coming West too is right!