Alba: A Wildlife Adventure

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years of doing this blog, I can never really predict just what games will and won’t resonate with me. I’ve had games I think would be an obvious love turn into absolute dead rubbers, and I’ve also had the converse, where an otherwise unassuming title winds up actually being really impressive. I’ve gotten that a lot with indie games in particular; as AAA games have become more homogenous and predictable, turning to the independent games sphere has more and more become the way of finding those intriguing little titles that offer a little more and serve as a reminder of the artistic potential of the medium.

Alba: A Wildlife Adventure (PC, PS4 [reviewed], PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox X/S)

Released Dec 2020 | Developed: Ustwo Games | Published: Ustwo / PID Games

Genre: Adventure | HLTB: 3.5 hours

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve also found myself increasingly appreciating games that celebrate a sense of calm. Even just across the years of this blog, games like Abzu, Firewatch, and A Short Hike have all crossed my desk and stayed with me for this reason, regardless of the score I gave them. Games without combat in them, where the goal is merely to explore or to immerse yourself in the serenity of the world – and occasionally adventure to preserve that sense of tranquillity – might no longer attract controversy as they did back when the concept was new, but I’m from an earlier era and I can’t help but approach games like the above without a vague sense of uncertainty and wonder a game can keep me entertained and mark progression without it. That they can – and do so with aplomb – is testament to the ever-evolving creativity of game developers. 

Alba: A Wildlife Adventure is another game in this chapter of the changing landscape of games that utterly captured me. We play as the titular Alba, a young girl visiting her abuelo and abuela who live out their golden years on an idyllic Mediterranean island. When Alba and her friend manage to rescue a rare beached dolphin, the pair decide to form a wildlife protection league and dedicate Alba’s vacation to cleaning up the island and especially the local nature reserve, which has lain neglected and empty since a fire some time ago. However, the very next day the mayor announces that the reserve is to be destroyed to make way for a brand new luxury hotel as a way to attract tourists back to the sleepy and struggling isle. 

Obviously, this horrifies the girls (and us, I’d hope) and they decide to fight back against it using the time-honoured method of a petition, trekking around the island and asking people to sign a letter demanding that the mayor stop the build and renovate the reserve instead. Issues that seem simple to children though are rarely thought of the same way by adults and so many of Secarral’s populace need convincing. Alba and Ines take matters into their own hands, investigating ways to restore the reserve, clean up the island, and document the huge variety of fauna that call the island home in order to show the grown-ups just how beautiful their home already is without the need for a massive hotel. 

So begins a game that I think one could fairly describe as a “vibes simulator”. No, no, don’t roll your eyes. Once the introduction is out of the way we’re given free reign of the island, which is a modest open world. There’s lovely variety to Secarral’s biomes, from a sleepy town to an idyllic forest complete with a babbling brook running through it, an olive grove steppe, dense rice farms and, of course, the nature reserve itself. In each of these live a multitude of different animals, and finding these is one of the chief challenges of the game. 

At the beginning of the game Alba is given a phone camera which you’ll use to document Secarral’s wildlife. I like the touch of the phone being hooked up to an app that tracks the animals of the island so you’ll know at a glance whether or not you’ve already taken a picture of whatever’s in your viewfinder; it’s one of those tiny quality-of-life things that shows a developer has stopped to think about the audience experience, you know? You’ve also got a guidebook you can flick through that keeps a mark of both what animals you’ve seen and tells you all the possible sightings you can make on the island. These are handily separated by biome so if you’re missing something you have a rough idea of where you’ll need to go to find it. That said, while a lot of animals are fairly easy to find, there are others that are a little more tricky. There are a handful of them – typically the ones marked “rare” – that are locked to story progress, but I found some of the vast amount of birds to be the trickiest to find and take a picture of since they tend to be quick and fly around far enough away that you need to zoom and hope you’ve got a quick finger on the camera’s trigger. 

Some animals however only return to Secarral once Alba has helped to rejuvenate it. Alongside the main story questline you’ll also pick up a bunch of sidequests aimed at helping to restore the island’s natural beauty, such as picking up trash that has been left by unthinking locals and tourists and rebuilding the information boards that tell folk what kind of animals can be found in the area. These might not sound like the most riveting videogame tasks but there’s a quiet serenity to them that feels honestly wonderful. It helps that there’s a lot of positive affirmation for doing so, like the little hearts that leap up from the animals around you when you dunk trash in the bin or when you use your emergency medical kit to heal sick or injured critters around the farm areas of the island. My favourite though might be when you repair old birdhouses because it makes tiny birds instantly swoop back to roost in them!

Renovating the nature reserve is the purest encapsulation of this routine. At the outset of the game it’s a mess, with a shock of burned reeds at the entrance and filled with dilapidated ruins of benches and shelters. Rubbish is strewn across the park and progress further in is impeded by a shattered bridge. Naturally, it’s also devoid of any wildlife, the waterfowl that once made the place their home having fled in the face of fire and pollution. It’s a sorry sight, but as you progress through the game and gain access to the necessary tools to clean it up it’s brilliantly rewarding to watch flocks of birds return. 

I think the sincerity with which Alba delivers its message is one of my favourite things about it. It’s not got a shred of cynicism, and what’s more it doesn’t “both sides” the issue being presented in the narrative; the mayor’s position is wrong and demonstrably so, underpinned as it is by short-term capitalist gain, an immoral lack of care for his community and home, and plain old-fashioned corruption. The reserve, and its renovation, are held above it entirely. Yes, the game says, the hotel would bring in more tourists and rapidly revitalise the town, but the price for doing so is the eradication of the natural habitat in which these increasingly rare animals live. Humanity has a duty of care to the world as its custodians, and we are failing at that bitterly. Alba presents us with an alternative, a small bright spark of care and optimism to remind us that we can still choose the right thing to do but doing so will put us at odds with a corporate greed that needs to be defeated. 

Aside from all that, Alba is also just a really sweet game. The island we get to roam around on is bright and colourful, all presented in a kind of low-poly retro throwback style that reminds me a lot of A Short Hike, and the wildlife in particular looks extra cute in this aesthetic. Talking to the folk around the island reveals a population with quaint and realistic thoughts and worries, and the problems you’re asked to solve in the game are small-scale. It is perhaps one of the most beautifully nice experiences I’ve had in a game while also having the narrative and atmospheric chops to back it up, which is where other games of its type have stumbled in my experience. Wandering around the island is done in a peaceful haze, and yet even here the game is stuffed with personality as Alba occasionally breaks from her run into a skip; similarly when you’re asked a question you don’t merely select “yes” or “no” but manually nod or shake Alba’s head with the control stick as she puts on a wide grin or a huge frown. These are the tiny details that elevated Alba for me. 

I think when you look at Alba it’d be easy to dismiss it as just another twee indie game – indeed, I probably wouldn’t have looked twice at it had it not been on sale. And yet, by the end of the game I was genuinely wowed. It feels like a privilege to have gotten to experience something so joyous and kind in its sentiment that I’ve since happily booted it back up and replayed it and that’s simply something I so rarely do unless a game has totally enraptured me. 

7/7 – TOP TIER.

As close to perfect as it gets, a game that surpasses any faults it might have and comes with the highest of recommendations. A must-play.