Comfy, cozy.

A very enjoyable game to chip away at before bed each night. The art style drew me in straight away but the highlight of the game for me was definitely the characters and their slowly developing relationships.

It's not an airtight story by any means. There's a lot of contrivances (boy howdy what are the odds that all of these strangers with extremely important connections to eachother would stay in this hotel on the same night?) but none of that really harms the overall tone and feel of the story imo. It's a character driven tale and everyone is just vibing.

Gameplay wise it's nothing amazing. The pacing is really thrown off by the amount of walking you have to do, the amount of doors you have to manually open and the sometimes inscrutable puzzles you have to solve. If you can tolerate these old-gamey mechanics though, I think you'll find a lot to like.

Happy New Year!

From the moment you first see Alba's walk cycle it becomes apparent that this game is about the carefree spirit of childhood, which is what makes the fact that it's also about political participation so interesting. Obvertly, the game asks you to raise awareness and get signatures, which can seem naively simplistic in such times, but I was pleased to see the game implicitly endorse direct action by just having you make improvements to the town on your own. Consuming media is not and cannot be activism, and it's always more important to address material concerns, but I appreciate Alba in this moment for finding joy and wonder in the work because win or lose, there's always more to be done.

It might be that I'm a bit biased: Alba takes place not only in Spain, but Catalonia, where I live. So it was easy for the game to win me over, especially since I didn't know that going in.

Less easy to achieve is a well-told story, which Alba does, coupled with simple, yet effective mechanics. Perhaps more impressively, the game recreates a small island and town with such charm and personality that it feels much more real than bigger, more photorealistic worlds from other games.

Alba is proof that less is more, especially in today's gaming landscape. Nevermind the "games for change" reputation it gets, it's a damn good game, period. It accomplishes everything it sets out to do, and then some.

Mira que el juego tiene la base para ser buenísimo. Modificar la isla tanto en terrereno como en mobiliario es crema, el museo esta guapo y hay mucho bicho y personalizar los muebles es un plus... pero la saga se dejó el alma ahí perdido en el salto de DS a Wii.

Los aldeanos son sacos de arena coleccionables con cara, el sistema de crafteo es 0 user friendly y el online y sus transiciones es para entrar en Nintendo con un hacha (de oro).

A ver si un dia les da por jugar al primero y se lo estudian.