Survival Kids review – island adventure makes for wholesome co-op on Switch 2
Though not especially groundbreaking or revolutionary, Survival Kids is a cutesy survival game that scratches a crafting itch for all family members.
If you're in the mood for a way to stress test the Nintendo Switch 2's co-op and GameShare features with friends, Survival Kids is a straightforward but charming island adventure.
Everything you need to know about Survival Kids is right there in the name – including the game's intended audience. It's a survival game starring kids designed to be played by kids looking to get their start in the survival/crafting genre. Go figure! As such, there'll likely be a tendency by some to 'judge a book by its cover' as it were, brushing off Survival Kids as merely the Nintendo Switch 2 's obligatory children's game that lacks any real depth or true invention
It's far from the case! Because while it's true that the type of island plundering antics Survival Kids provides definitely skews towards a younger player base, it doesn't take away from how inherently fun (and chaotic) it can be to explore exotic islands and solve puzzles with friends. Just don't go in expecting much more than that.
The main thing Survival Kids has going for it are just generally pleasant vibes that are ever present. You play as a kid unwittingly washed up on a deserted island alright, but these traditionally traumatic events are hardly harrowing as joining you on the adventure to get home is a witting British narrator and all kinds of cool makeshift gadgets – spanning everything from bomb flowers to leaf fans – to deploy.
This is where the isometric perspective definitely does the game great service, since it makes taking in and exploring all the game's multiple biomes while working out where to go next a true joy. I wouldn't describe Survival Kids as a graphical powerhouse on Nintendo Switch 2, but the colourful environments are charming enough to always draw the eye.
Most of your time spent exploring these islands involves the typical routine of chopping down trees for wood, cracking open rocks to find stone, and slicing down branches to retrieve vines. These three resources remain constant throughout all of Survival Kids' levels, which in addition to cookable fish and fruits needed to maintain a high level of stamina, ensures the actual act of crafting and surviving never once feels overwhelming.
Obviously, the inverse of such a light-hearted and straightforward approach is that it also often feels simplistic, yet gathering resources to place into boxes never takes too long thanks to the ability to either stack them when carrying or lift larger items with a friend.
Speaking of which, while definitely not the ideal way to play, the ability to play Survival Kids entirely solo I found to be incredibly cool. It would have been easy for developer Konami to make this a co-op only experience a la Split Fiction, but I enjoy having the option to fully take in each island's puzzles and scenery without fear of squabbling with a bunch of friends to move a log to a certain plate or aim a cannon in a specific direction.
Having said that, though, while the option to play split-screen on a single Switch 2 is welcome, I played a good portion of Survival Kids with a friend using the console's new GameShare function. It worked flawlessly aside from a slightly choppier framerate on the second console.
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Survive to thrive
None of the levels in Survival Kids take particularly long to complete. In fact, one of the few incentives to replay them is a three-star rating system based by on completion time, whereby gunning for the quickest time (either alone or with friends) will see you awarded with the most stars. Other than that, puzzles and challenges hardly change on a repeat playthrough, though I was surprised by just how well each level's Treasure Stones are.
These serve as hidden collectibles that award you even more stars should you find them using the specific route required to get them back to your base camp. Doing this tends to be a lot more challenging than the story-sensitive resources you must plunder to progress. Some locations had me truly scratching my head.
While each island's objective of transporting your base camp and re-building your raft never changes, the way you go about doing so frequently does. Some biomes such as Boom Flower Bay have you lobbing explosive plants to open up new pathways, while the likes of Springy Shores has you bouncing around plinths to gain height using trampolines and Windy Cove sees you push along far-off objects using the gust of your leaf-constructed fan. As far as imaginative puzzles go, Survival Kids isn't short on ideas – and every island riffing on a different tool, gadget, or theme certainly prevents monotony from setting in during the game's 10-hour runtime.
For as inventive as puzzles can be, however, figuring the solution out to a few isn't always well judged. True, wry narration provided from Marcus Brigstocke is always on hand to provide a clue when something isn't quite clicking, but there comes a point where firing cannons are introduced that prove more irksome than challenging.
Several times when gathering up items in the attempt to move them from one side of the island to the other was I blasted off a platform and forced to restart. Being forced to undergo this routine two or three times is fine, but five or six? Even for older family members playing, timing can be quite specific. Then there are the physics puzzles where you rely on one thing bumping into another to have a desired effect; getting these instances to work can be a tad hit or miss.
Survival Kids won't win any awards for being the prettiest or flashiest game exclusive to the Nintendo Switch 2 at launch, but it largely succeeds in its goal to offer younger audiences a charming and wholesome family-friendly adventure where working together conquers all.
Sure, replayability is somewhat limited despite the three-star rating for levels and collectibles, and some puzzles are unnecessarily troublesome to overcome compared to others. That said, it serves as an ideal way to put the Nintendo Switch 2's natural co-op tendencies through its paces thanks to its bright, summery vibes and satisfying survival loop.
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