Alba: A Wildlife Adventure
Explore the island, then save it.
Alba: A Wildlife Adventure is another game I played in one sitting because I was having so much fun. It’s a kid’s game, in that kids could definitely play and understand and enjoy it, but I also loved it as a 30-something. You take control of young Alba as she embarks on a holiday on a Mediterranean island during her summer holidays. There she meets Inés, and the pair spend the week saving the island from a corrupt mayor and a property developer, picking up litter, and photographing the island’s beautiful wildlife.
It would have been easy for the developers to just make Alba a simple collect-athon, where your only goal was to explore the island and take photos of the birds and other critters that inhabit it. However, they expanded things out from there and while that’s the core of the game, there is more to it.
The island is a beautiful environment that, like most, has seen better days. Humans have made their mark and there’s litter all over the island, so naturally Alba and Inés take it upon themselves to clear up. As they are, they learn the terrible truth – the mayor is in cahoots with the property magnate and there are plans afoot to build a luxury hotel and resort right on the beach! The girls clock on immediately how devastating this would be for the island’s wildlife and beautiful habitats, so start a petition. They slowly convince the residents to sign and reveal the corruption to everyone, stopping the hotel and saving the day.
The actual gameplay is really fun too. Finding all the birds and critters and snapping photos of them is rewarding (though to be fair I loved Pokémon Snap) and the environment is rich and colourful and truly joyful to explore. You do a lot of walking from place to place, exploring, searching for wildlife, and just generally engaged in childlike wandering about, and the environment is lush and engaging enough to support this amount of retreading.
I loved how unhurried Alba: A Wildlife Adventure felt. Yeah, we needed to get people bought into the plight but there was still time to lie in the grass and wait for the rare birds to make an appearance. We could chat with the archaeologist and have ice cream. Alba and Inés are children, probably less than 10 years old, and they are on holiday. Games require a certain suspension of disbelief inherently, but Alba: A Wildlife Adventure never stretched it to breaking point; we never did anything that made me go “Really? That’s a bit much.”
With games (and any media really) that concern the environment, there’s always a worry that they are going to come across as moralising and preachy, however, this is not so with Alba: A Wildlife Adventure. The message is clear and strong – human intervention and action is destroying wildlife habitats and environments, and human action is required to halt and reverse it – but it’s never suffocating. A lot is made of games with moral ambiguity and grey areas between choices where you can’t know what’s “right” and what’s “wrong”, or games where good intentions lead to unintended outcomes. Don’t get me wrong, I love these experiences, but sometimes it’s nice to know for sure that you’re doing something ‘good’ – nothing bad can come of picking up litter. Even morally neutral activities like taking photos of birds can be a relief in a hobby that constantly requires you to grapple with yourself.
These kinds of gentle experiences are underrated in my opinion. The world is a hard place to exist, doubly so if you think much about your place in it and the impact you have. Trying to balance your moral obligations with just living life is really tough, and it’s vital that games (and other media) can provide a full escape from that. Again, there is value on the other side of the coin too. Games provide us with a safe space in which to experiment with creating emotions that we are unfamiliar with. It’s a way of practising how it feels to do things we wouldn’t do in life. And that’s all well and good of course, but having a break from that is vital, and Alba: A Wildlife Adventure provides.
Before I go, here’s a video of me livestreaming Alba: A Wildlife Adventure on Christmas Day a few years ago. It was a wonderful community experience and I had a great time, but the video isn’t really edited and has a lot of asides to chat so bear that in mind if you decide to watch it.
Also, I didn’t realise it until I came to do the image credits, but this was made by the same folks who made Assemble With Care - turns out I really love their vibe!
Game: Alba: A Wildlife Adventure
Developer: ustwo games
Publisher: ustwo games/PID games
Platforms: PC, Apple Arcade, Switch, Xbox, PlayStation
I loved watching this on stream, such a nice, gentle game, and with one of my favourite themes. Anything that nudges people to remembering that we need to care for our environment is cool with me.
On a similar note, give Wildmender a go. It's a beautiful game with lots to collect. I do mean lots.
Sounds like a really sweet and interesting game, it’s always pleasing when a message can be passed on without feeling forced or cloying.
Something i noticed here is the names of the protagonists, Alba obviously to us Brits is a name for Scotland but in Spanish/Italian its meaning is closer to ‘dawn’ while Inés as a name means ‘pure’ and something about those names and the messaging of the game feels very intentional. I wonder if the designers are European?