Beasts of Maravilla Island Review

Do you enjoy taking photos of animals and wildlife in real life but you don’t enjoy the bugs and potential weather hazards you may encounter? If that’s the case, Beasts of Maravilla Island may be a title that is of interest to you. 

You take on the role of a young girl named Marina. Your grandfather was an explorer and told you crazy tales of a place called Maravilla Island. He dedicated himself to protecting all of the unique and magical creatures that inhabited this island. So when he passed, he left his journal with all his writing and sketches in it and a camera to you. His last wish was that you would visit the island to get photos of all the wildlife and flora then share your photos with others to show the magic of this place.

After landing on the shores of the island, Marina sees a magical deer watching her who disappears into thin air. You realise that all the stories that her grandfather had told her were actually true, not just crazy fairy tales. With your camera in hand you set off to explore the island to capture evidence of all the creatures that your grandfather had written about in his journal.

The gameplay is very simple in Beasts of Maravilla Island. For most of the time you are just walking around looking for stuff to photograph. Your character can’t jump, but she can climb up huge vines to get up to other spots that were too high to access before. Once you are done taking photos in that area you can always climb back down. Besides just taking photos, Marina can look through her grandfather’s journal at any point, and go through her photo album to see the shots that have already been taken. 

Unlike Pokémon Snap your photos are not graded. Beasts of Maravilla Island only wants you to have a photo of all the creatures and plants, it doesn’t care how centered or how large the subject is. The game didn’t motivate me to go out and try to get better pictures, so it will be up to you to try and get the best photos that you can. 

Beasts of Maravilla Island has an artistic painted look to it and a bright cheerful palette of colours. The creatures are incredibly unique, in everyday life you aren’t going to see a bird that looks like a banana with wings and a beetle with a jewel for a back. Unfortunately there aren’t a ton of inhabitants on the island to take photos of, so it won’t take you very long to see all the specimens. After about two and a half hours, I had found everything except for a snail and one other bird, so total play time is only three hours total.

The gameplay is very relaxing and you never feel like you are in a rush to get things done, it is very chill. Unless you get stuck and hit a bug where you can’t move when you are on a vine and the only option is to whistle. This was very frustrating. I’m not sure how calling a creature is going to help you but this bug totally made me have to stop and restart my game. The other odd thing I noticed was with the animation. When Marina is climbing a vine, if you look at her hands she’s not actually holding onto the vine at all, just air so she was really just floating. 

I feel Beasts of Maravilla Island would be a great title for someone who just wants a short, casual experience where they get around and get to snap some photos and see some unique creatures. This could also be a great title for a child who just wants to see some neat animals with a heart-warming story. If you are looking for a deeper game that judges you on the quality of your photos and motivates you to do better this might not be the title you are looking for. Especially if you want a longer game time experience than a few hours.