Product Info

Platform

Switch, PlayStation 4, PC

Publisher

NIS America

Developer

ARC SYSTEM WORKS/TOYBOX Inc.

Genre

Simulation, Other

Players

1

File Size (Minimum)

810.75 MB

Release Date (NA)

May 9, 2017

Purchase From

eShop

PSN Store

Steam

Fans of farming-style games will find Happy Birthdays to be a pleasant experience with quite a cute appeal, but casual gamers may find it too tedious and repetitive to keep coming back.

Back to the Future

Happy Birthdays is a magical tale that, though lacking a deep narrative, can be a peaceful terraforming simulator. Your job is to manage and maintain your own Cube, as the game calls it, where an ecosystem thrives but needs assistance in its own evolution. From raising land to adding water, you guide the ecosystem on the path to modern humanity — your ultimate goal in this endeavor.

The game gives you four Cube options when beginning your adventure with each one possessing a different, pre-existing ecosystem. From there, you mold the land differently while maintaining course towards humanity’s upbringing. Once a Cube is chosen, you are flung into a narrative that has entirely its own artstyle, and is also rather obscure.

You find a hidden map that you follow until you discover a light hovering in the forest. As you approach it, you are flung into the far reaches of space and encounter Navi, your informative sidekick, who proceeds to explain that in order for you to return home, you must create your home from the Cube before you. The most unfortunate part of the adventure so far is how unnecessary it feels because from here on out, there are minimal moments of narrative, and none of them have any influence on the world you are taking care of.

Playing God

At this point in your journey, Navi walks you through your terraforming abilities, explaining how to raise and lower segments of land, as well as how to use special skills to create river sources or rain clouds for extra moisture in a particular area of your Cube. Skills can be used with the power of stars which you gain as rewards for producing new life and for exploring your Cube between time progressions. At first, it seems like stars will come few and far between, but before long, they are given in excess and most casual players may not even use most of them.

Your use of skills and terraforming will influence the overall temperature of your Cube, which is important because different climates will affect what species are brought into the world next and which ones will ultimately go extinct. However, you only have so much stamina, or HP, and the more you terraform, the more it depletes.

From here, you go into what is called Macro Mode where you can see your Cube from afar and control time’s movement. As you let time pass, your HP will regenerate, giving both you and your Cube time to adjust before making more changes. Passing time is what produces extinctions and new birthdays in your Cube, and while you can fast-forward to reach new milestones more quickly, this will also cause you to lose HP rather than gain it.

A Lifelong Lesson

Navi is a wonderful guide and presents a well-rounded tutorial. However, well after the tutorial seems over and you reach a point where you feel like you just might have the hang of developing your world, Navi will present new controls you may have yet to realize are possible, which expands things further.

This causes you to have to make many quick and massive adjustments for the sake of the previously established climate and just makes you wonder when the tutorial ended and when the independent experience truly began.

Cuteness Devolved

The length of this journey depends on the player’s level of completionism. Not all species need to be discovered to reach mankind’s arrival, but those fond of farming may take to that extra challenge, especially considering the narrative for every Cube is exactly the same.

By pulling up the menu, you can see all species in order of their evolution and at what temperatures you need to set your climate to produce them. This provides some unique insight into how evolution developed, giving the game some educational personality.

All the animals are adorable and the animation is absolutely charming. Therefore, it is not hard to get whisked away into hours of development with your creatures, but the experience dulls down when you realize that each animal is there as a representation of their species and doesn’t really do much. They don’t interact with each other or move far in any direction, making the alternate close-up camera angle feel almost useless. Granted, as you jump back out to Macro Mode and fast-forward time, things do change, of course, but you never get to witness it happen up close.

Summary

Happy Birthdays is a laid-back experience that one can certainly lose hours to simply through micro-managing their vibrant Cube. However, with a barebones narrative and repetitive gameplay, it leaves much to be desired, including the urge to keep coming back over time. Indeed, this may be one celebration that is okay to miss.

Disclaimer: A digital review copy was provided by NIS America.