On the surface, Animal Friends Adventure appears to be a cute, family-friendly, indie developed platformer. There are different animal characters to play as, pets to collect and some nice, chilled out levels to play. However, once you get into the game you won't get out, often quite literally.
The Xbox One port of Animal Friends Adventure is, unfortunately, filled with glitches and bugs that render the experience frustrating at best and unplayable at worst. This, combined with the sudden ramp-up in difficulty about halfway through means this game's potential is sadly wasted.
First Impressions
At first glance, the game looked promising. While not being equipped with the very best graphics and sound, it is reasonable and the retro type graphics grow on you, feeling reminiscent of an upgraded version of mid-1990s platformers like Gex.
There are eight animals to play as in total and collecting coins in the different levels will enable you to unlock them. Some unlock with diamonds, which can be acquired by defeating bosses or by using the roulette wheel mechanic.
The formula is typical, made up of four-five levels followed by a boss level. However, it differs in that you can enter the next area without defeating a boss. Something which later turns out to be essential.
A unique mechanic that I liked was the ability to upgrade the animal characters with more health and strength. This meant that as the difficulty increased, you could upgrade to give yourself a better shot at victory. There are also pets available that will follow your character and give them a unique boost or some kind of help, at least that's the idea.
These Animals Are Riddled With Bugs
The main problem the game has is that its port feels very premature. I played it on Xbox One, and the glitches and bugs were terrible.
Before I go into detail, I first want to note that after we reached out to the developer he was very apologetic. He is aware there are issues and as a one-man development team, it will take a while to fix. That said, I feel that right now, this game is just not yet playable on this platform.
The first issue I encountered was the game freezing after level two when the treasure chest appeared at the end. I had to hard reset the game twice and then hard reset the entire console in order to get any further. This issue persisted on and off as I battled through the game, with full resets needing to be done several times.
There were also numerous graphical glitches, including platforms you couldn't land on and scenery that went through your character. These were annoying, but didn't render the game unplayable. However, the boss issues could easily have done so.
Defeating bosses is actually optional, which is great due to the fact that the second boss kept glitching out and kept kind of twerking on the spot, rendering him unbeatable.
I'd be curious to see how this port compares with the PC version, due to the fact that the Xbox One port is incredibly frustrating due to these issues, which overshadow any enjoyment of the game in a major way.
Playing The Game
When the game actually plays it's reasonably fun. It's not the best platformer I've ever played, but it's far from the worst. There are a couple of nice mechanics in there, such as choosing different character and pet combinations to enable you to get past specific levels. However, this didn't always work out as well as I hoped.
The pets are actually tiny, or at least the rock pet I got first was. At first, I didn't even realize my newly acquired pet had even appeared, as I couldn't see it amidst the background. Then, when I did spot it, I noticed it didn't appear to be doing anything. I'm not sure if I failed or the pet did, but I suspect it was the pet.
The early levels of this game showed some great potential. They provide fun, family-friendly platformer action through and through. There are things to collect, enemies to jump on, platforms to jump over, and bombs to explode. So far, so good, if a little predictable. However, beyond the glitches, the main gameplay issue came about halfway through.
The Green Goo Of Instant Death
After a good few levels of glitchy gaming, I discovered a level that suddenly ramped things up a notch, and then some. I slid down a ramp, just as I had done so many times before, and landed straight in green goo that instantly killed me, despite my upgraded character.
I restarted and managed to stop just short of the deadly goo. I tried to jump onto the ledge across the water and failed. The ramp you automatically speed down has only a tiny straight at the bottom with a cliff above it. Navigating both of these obstacles and making the very precise jump needed to not instantly die was a challenge much more difficult than anything else I encountered in the game.
Such a sudden and sharp increase in difficulty felt out of place and incredibly frustrating. This level was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I really wanted to enjoy this game, but that green goo? It also instantly killed what love I had mustered for the title.
Wasted Potential
This game is a poster child for wasted potential. The rushed port just screams bad idea and the random, difficult mechanics just thrown in the middle of the game has left me confused and disappointed.
Animal Friends Adventure feels like a title that needs to go back into development. It has the potential to be a reasonable retro-style platformer, but there are just too many errors in it right now for it to even hit average. In its current state, I literally cannot complete it. Not a good move for any game.
Since the developer does seem genuinely keen on improving the game, here's hoping he takes this title back several steps so it can become playable and enjoyable.
An Xbox One copy of Animal Friends Adventure was purchased by TheGamer for this review. Animal Friends Adventure is currently available on Xbox One, iOS, Google Play, and PC.
Animal Friends Adventure