<Reviews his tweets>
It is here, must have the game
<downloads it to phone>
—000–
I am sure you have all heard about the Scout Association launching the Secret Island Adventure(SIA) game today.
There has been a lot of hype, Twitter and Facebook activity and a video on Youtube.
The Scout App website says
The Scouts: Secret Island Adventure is an adventure game that will test your Scouting skills to the limit.
Customise your avatar then begin your quest, exploring all four zones on the island to discover the chief scout’s secret knowledge.
Filled with amusing challenges and perplexing puzzles, you’ll have to have all your Scouting wits about you to conquer the Secret Island Adventure.
But the adventure doesn’t end there. Hidden on the Island are three mini-games: hang-gliding, mountain boarding and kayaking. Unlock these mini-games then post your top score
I have had a copy of the game since Sunday when it was put on to iTunes, I paid my £1.99 and downloaded it to my phone. I believe it will be the same price if you buy it on the Android Marketplace
My first thought was £1.99 thats a bit steep and spoke to the Scout Association to ask what if any of the £1.99 goes to scouting and why a game?
”The Scout Association is receiving a royalty from each game sold. More importantly Scouting sees the distribution of this game as a way of putting the Scouting adventure in front of more young people than ever before. We think some players of the electronic game will be tempted to take part in the real life Scouting adventure. Using a game to reach out to new groups of young people is essential if we want to continue to grow the movement.”
So to the game (I have the iPhone version so I can only comment on that one.)
The game is a platform adventure game, where you control the character by tapping the screen to move your character about and interact with items and people. The premise is you have headed to the Secret Island and the rest of your party are not feeling well after the boat journey, your told to head west and go set up camp. Along the way you meet people and find objects that will help you with various Scouting task you must complete such as crossing a river, identifying tracks or leaves.
You start the game be creating your character, choosing male or female then editing the hair skin and necker colour before naming your character
Your character comes with a rucksack and a logbook. The rucksack holds item found along the way and items can be combined to may other items. e.g. three parts of a compass found can be combined to make a compass and so on. The Logbook has some hints and tips on items like tracking signs and animal tracks fires knots.
My first impressions of the game were that the graphics were a little low quality given some of the games out there on the OS platform. However as with everything there are positive and negative points I thought and headed into the game.
I have now been playing the game for five days and if I am being honest I am a little disappointed with it. I like the idea behind it and as the quote earlier said, it has the potential to show scouting to young people in the so called “computer game generation” and make them want to get out there and join the adventure for real.
The reason I was disappointed was that I have found the game unresponsive, it may be fat finger syndrome and I have yet to try playing it on my iPad where maybe a bigger screen will help. However on the iPhone to make actions happen or to talk to people or collect things I found myself having to press the screen 5,6 or 7 times.
The game leads you through the scenes ok and there is a bit of a challenge in working out what items to need to collect a key from this person, a hammer from the next place, a gate to repair and a goat to catch.
I was annoying that on certain parts of the game there were maps to assist you in finding items. However the problem is that on some maps the identifying icon does not seen to tally up with your location in the game. For example in one area there is a skate park and when you stand in the middle of the skate park you icon is shown of the park to the right hand side.
It does not take a genius to work out that if you find an identifiable item in the game, you can use then use the map to work out where to go without using the cursor but still it is a little annoying.
red dot is me and should be on the path
Having solved the map issue, I did find the game to be a little gripping it was probably because I wanted to try the mini-games we have heard so much about. I will say that the game does make you put your scouting brain on, thinking what items to I need to start a fire (kindling, wood, ignition source) and remembering your tracking symbols.
As has been promoted, within the main game there are three mini-games, Hang-gliding, Kayaking and Mountain Boarding, I have managed to activate two of the three (Hang-Gliding and Kayaking) and found them to be challenging. I say challenging I will admit that I was not very good at them, crashing my hang-glider on a number of occasions in to trees and rock faces. I did manage to fly my hang-glider upside down which I did not think was possible but kind of cool (although did cause me to crash in to the ground). The lack of instructions at the start of the Kayaking mini challenge increase the challenge element of the game and made it very difficult to understand what to do.
I was a little disappointed that after activating the mini games, they did not appear on the front screen available to play as the home screen seems to indicate. However as I only managed to crash landed the Hang-gliding and drowned in the Kayaking it could be that you have to complete the challenge before they open up
Lastly and what is at the moment really letting the game down for me, is that the game has crashed on me about four times now and with no autosave, (you are asked on exit if you want to resume the game or Quit and Save) this has meant that I have had to repeat a number of sections. Most annoyingly the last crash that happened just after and I combined a number of item in to a new item (fishing rod) parts of the fishing rod (the stick) returned to their original location other parts (the line) did not reappear this has meant that have had to return to the start of the game and completed it again.
So in conclusion I like the idea and the premiss of the game I just think the delivery as the moment is a little week at the moment. I will admit that my copy does say development build in the bottom right hand corner of the screen so maybe I will get an update now the official release is out and it will fix the bugs and problems mentioned above.
If you decide to part with £1.99 and get the game tell me what you think in the comments below. I be interested in answers to the following questions
- Are you having the same troubles or is it just me?
- Does your game say Development build?
- Android Users how is it for you?
TTFN
Kiff
©ChrisMeadows2012
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