Game: Beasts of Maravilla Island
Genre: Indie, Adventure, Role-Playing
System: Nintendo Switch (also on Steam)
Developers | Publishers: Banana Bird Studios | Whitethorn Digital
Age Rating: US E | EU 3+
Price: US $9.99 | UK £ 7.19 | EU € 7,99
Release Date: June 12th, 2021 USA | June 24th, 2021 EU
Review code used, with many thanks to Whitethorn Digital
If you are a frequent visitor to LadiesGamers you will know that we have been following the progress of Beasts of Maravilla Island for a while now. Starting out as a Kickstarter campaign which Yvonne wrote about here and after that, a free demo was on Steam in February. I got to try out the demo on Steam for an impressions article and now Beasts of Maravilla Island is out on Nintendo Switch in the USA with an EU release date to follow. So how did my playtime go with the game on the Switch, read on to find out!
Maravilla Island
As the game starts Marina Montez steps of the boat onto the shores of Maravilla island. She is a young girl whose grandfather passed away recently leaving Marina some instructions and a few items. Grandfather has left Marina his journal and camera and a mission to fill his journal with pictures of flora and fauna found on the island and share the island’s beauty with the world.
Armed with the camera and journal Marina starts her trek around the island. Maravilla island has lots of fauna and birds a few other animals to photograph. The camera in the game is very simple to use. Using the ZL button to open the camera, and can you can zoom in or out using the directional buttons. Hitting the A button or ZR will snap a picture of the photo’s subject. You can also take selfies of Marina and the wildlife.
Plenty to See
As Marina traverses the island she has objectives to complete to fill in her grandfather’s journal. Those objectives can be checked by opening either the journal or the photo album at any time. In order to move around each biome, Marina will need to solve simple puzzles. Puzzles include taking pictures of a specific flower so the flash makes it bloom, after which you can cross over it or moving a snail with a reflective shell into a light beam are just a few examples.
Take Photos
The main objective is taking photos of specific birds during certain activities, such as when they are flying or showing off their feathers. Marina can whistle to get the attention of the animals which helps to be able to capture a photo of them.
She can also check her grandfathers’ journal for information on each animal or bird as she takes its picture. Unfortunately, these behaviour-specific photos are limited to just one species in each area, I’d have liked to have seen a few more variations of species in each area to take those kinds of photos off.
There are some extraordinary creatures and plants to photograph, each with their own unique appearance and behaviour such as the Sparkling Lamp Lily, the Mango Kakapo and the Prism-Winged Butterfly. It is a lot of fun taking pictures in the game.
Lately, there have been quite a few games released with the main mechanic in the game being photography, such as Alba A Wildlife Adventure and TOEM (PC), not forgetting New Pokémon Snap. However, I do wonder how all these games, with their main mechanic of taking photos, will hold up to the ever-popular Pokémon Snap.
Visuals and More
Visually Beasts of Maravilla Island looks well on the Switch, bright, vibrant and colourful. The music and especially the sound effects are great. They sure do give off the atmosphere of being deep in a humid hot tropical forest.
The game controls well too. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the performance of the game on the Nintendo Switch. The game has framerate problems and at times Marina would clip through the scenery and get stuck. Usually, a quick restart of the save file resolved this, and make Marina un-stuck.
Additionally, a bigger glitch occurred later on that left my game unplayable, with Marina floating in mid-air unable to do anything. Marina may have changed her mind and decided to take up flying instead of photography, but I’m jesting as it is clearly a glitch. I am in touch with the developers who have assured me that a second update on the game will fix the glitch. Let’s hope so as I really want to continue Marina’s adventure in Beasts of Maravilla Island.
Conclusion
Beasts of Maravilla Island is an entertaining romp through a magical island. Taking photos of the wildlife is fun. It is a game that any age group from the youngest to the oldest would enjoy playing, though for now I would advise playing the game on PC. At least until the kinks are ironed out of the Nintendo Switch version of Maravilla Island. This is also reflected in my score which would have been I Like It A Lot, had the game performed better on my Switch.
Final Verdict: I Like It 
This game was so glitchy on Switch I couldn’t enjoy it. The game play was kind of boring for the first hour (that’s all I could last), which I might have enjoyed more or been bothered by less if the game wasn’t stuttering so badly. I did not like this game, I found it unplayable! Beautiful world but it was impossible to fully enjoy. I bought it because this reviewer “like[s] it” but now I distrust this website, haha!
Hi, thanks for reading. I did mention the glitch and bad frame rate in the review and I also say that I recommend playing it on Pc until the Switch version is fixed. The game was updated on the 1st July and isn’t as glitchy and the frame rate isn’t as bad. I can “like” a glitchy game as we do like to give the developers time to fix their game, and reviews of this sort is also feedback for the developer.