A gentle cadence and quirky characters can't counteract Mythwrecked's repetitiveness, making this more Greek tragedy than odyssey.
As I pull on another hoodie and fight the urge to turn on the heat, the soft sands and sun-bleached stones of Ambrosia Island are undeniably inviting. So is Mythwrecked's promise of healthy, frictionless adventure: as we approach the 2024 goal, I can't imagine anything more delightful than wasting a few hours exploring a lush tropical island.
If you go in with that mindset, knowing that Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island is a simple, unhurried game that plays out smoothly over about ten hours, then I don't think there's much to be offended by. You are Alex, a young woman shipwrecked on a paradise island where a group of Greek gods are dealing with the loss of collective memory and the consequences of friendship. Your job is to encourage the former and encourage the latter by scouring the island in search of lost memories to help your new friends remember who they are and why they loved each other in the first place.
The gods, transformed into contemporary characters who will delight and annoy in equal measure, are initially cautious, but open up as you converse and do favors for them, as well as uncover clues about their lives before they get there. All potential friends are unlocked in exactly the same way (chat, do favors, get souvenirs, chat more, do more favors, get more souvenirs), which means that as soon as half an hour later, you're done. – Mythwrecked There will be no more surprises for you.
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And look, I get it. Maybe this is exactly what you are looking for. Maybe you're a little burned out on the AAA grind and are looking for a game that's smooth and predictable in just this way. maybe you love the coming and going of quest quests and treasure hunts in little Ambrosia. This is all true for me as well, but ultimately there's a fine line between predictable and boring, and Mythwrecked unfortunately falls on the wrong side for me.
As beautiful as it is, the world of Ambrosia is curiously forgettable. You're either stomping through sand or stepping onto a nondescript gray stone, and while each god has their unique style and personality represented in their immediate surroundings, the world around them embodies little of that. This means that no beach feels particularly different from the next, and no part of the citadel looks different either. Your journey from point A to B will inevitably be thwarted by a Greek pot that, much to my chagrin, we can't break, or be blocked entirely by the strange location of a barrel or a dead end. For the home of the gods, everything is surprisingly pedestrian, difficult to navigate and… well, boring.
However, there is a fast travel system. A bit. While you can't instantly come and go between locations on a whim, there are nine magical doors throughout the island that will always transport you back to the shrine in the middle of the map near your house, a trick that Polygon's debut game Treehouse Roki had a great effect when used in a point-and-click puzzle context. Your house itself is pretty useless as a space, as a mind, and I never bothered with it after realizing I couldn't do anything there but sleep. But I appreciate the return of these magical doors, especially when I'm trying to find a god or complete a favor at a particular time of day.
That's right: there is a dynamic day/night cycle. Some gods are only available to chat at certain times, and some favors can also only be completed during set windows. However, unlike Animal Crossing, you don't have to exit IRL and come back (or sneakily change the time on your device). On the other side of the island there are about eleven million benches where you can sit and change the time to whatever you want… which makes the whole cycle a bit redundant.
That's the problem here. While I appreciate these quality of life touches, they make much of Mythwrecked's mechanics unnecessary. You can also trade Ambrosia fruit, but like the day/night cycle that can be overridden at almost any time… well, it's almost meaningless. First of all, the fruit grows. everywhere; All the greedy gods have to do is go out and grab one, ffs. However, the story requires you to collect it and use it to trade with the gods for anything from keys to cassettes to plots of land where you can even farm. further Ragweed fruit. This could have been an interesting detail, but there's a lot of stuff (look at the map image below – all those yellow dots are fruit I've yet to collect!) I bought every item I could the moment they were unlocked. and still It's not over. And I finished the game with over 350 of the damn things left over.
Collecting souvenirs and completing favors is also surprisingly simplistic. There's quite a bit of back-and-forth (this is not a game that respects your time) and I found the gradual way tasks were doled out towards the end irritating, as you often complete a series of favors. in one area only to be sent back there five minutes later for something else. However, trying to discover which hidden memory belongs to who is clean; I never went to the Oracle for guidance; Solving it for myself was much more rewarding, especially when Alex is searching for multiple gods simultaneously. Chasing proximity cues was also a cool feature of the mini-puzzle – I never got tired of that satisfying beep as you got closer and closer to your prize.
However, the more you play, the less appealing everything feels. While Mythwrecked's cast is diverse, its world is not, with very little to make each area feel unique or worth exploring. The fixed camera that you can't manipulate also always gets in the way, sometimes creating unforced errors when entering and exiting the sanctuary doors. There are small steps that Alex can't (read: won't) climb. The interactions with the gods are cheesy at best and embarrassing at worst, and even if completely Suspending reality, the relationships Alex quickly forges with each individual god feel forced and cloying rather than meaningful, especially since each character's vocal mannerisms are overused. There's always a bit of excitement when you collect enough stamps to unlock a new area, but even that ends up being disappointing; The puzzles you complete to open the doors are uninspired to the point of being insulting.
There are many ways a little adjustment here or there could have elevated the adventure. The mosaics we discovered for Aphrodite: what if they were all different and maybe told their own stories? The string lights we powered for Zeus and Hades: could they have been different colors, perhaps revealing hitherto hidden secrets when lit? What if ghosts heard things while wandering around the island at night? The lighthouse we call home and spruce up with home decor, both salvaged and saved, couldn't we have at least been able to decorate our own home on our own? As it is, the things you find are automatically added magically whether you want them to or not. Nothing can be removed or repositioned. You can't change the colors or add your own touch. There is absolutely no agency here and yet so many opportunities have been wasted.
If you've been looking for a simple, stress-free adventure to settle into with the kids this Christmas, Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island is as good a bet as any, especially since it contains no profanity, sex, or violence. Beyond that, though, with its baffling, uninspired environments and repetitive fetch quests, I'm sorry to say I'm not entirely sure who else Mythwrecked is for.
Publisher Whitethorn Games provided a copy of Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island for review.