Latest news with #SurvivalKids
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Survival Kids proves Nintendo Switch 2 isn't just about Mario Kart World
The interesting thing about console launches is that you never know what unexpected treasures will emerge from the first batch of games. Who could have foretold that the hero of the PlayStation launch would be a fireworks simulation (Fantavision), or that the most joyous title in the initial GameCube lineup would involve simians racing each other in giant transparent globes (Super Monkey Ball)? The latest example could well be Konami's Survival Kids, the only new third-party game in the Switch 2 opening wave. It's the latest in the publisher's cult series of tropical island survival sims, which began on the Game Boy Color and, despite never really attracting vast global success, continued on to the Nintendo DS under a new name, Lost in Blue. Now it's back as a familyfriendly co-op survival adventure, in which groups of up to four players are shipwrecked on a mysterious archipelago, and must survive by gathering resources, crafting tools, finding food and exploring a series of lush, cartoonish environments. Four people can play online, but the game also supports Switch 2's game sharing, which lets one person who owns the game connect wirelessly with other consoles to play together. Andrew Dennison, who heads the game's developer Unity, sees this as one of the Switch 2's key features. 'With splitscreen you have one machine rendering two different versions of the game,' he says. 'With GameShare, we can compress one of those views and stream it … we render everything three times and push that out to two other consoles. As much as you can deep dive into tech specs, the benefits of GameShare are delightful. Other players in the same room as you don't have to own the game, they don't have to download anything … they can just turn on their Switch or Switch 2, push a button and they're playing a game.' Unlike survival titles such as Don't Starve or Project Zomboid (or indeed Lost in Blue), there's no mortal peril in Survival Kids. Running out of food hampers your progress, but you can't actually starve; if you die, you just – respawn nearby. 'We wanted to make sure the game was enjoyable for people at every skill level,' says Dennison. 'It's a balancing act – we don't want to bore experienced gamers – but you can streamline gameplay challenge without simplifying to the point of making it irrelevant.' Due to the strict NDAs around the Switch 2 hardware, the developer couldn't bring in many external testers to fine-tune the difficulty – so Dennison ended up testing the game on his nieces, and on the finance department. Building tools is key – combine a vine and a stick and you get a fishing rod with which to lasso useful objects. Construct an umbrella and you can glide across wide canyons. There are no cumbersome item-inventory screens: when you need to build a tool or contraption, you can take what you need and drop it all into a bucket that magically spits it out. Tools are all stored at base camp, not in a menu, so that you can easily take a path home to pick up what you need. As with Overcooked, Survival Kids is all about streamlined cooperation and carefully divvied-out tasks. Chopping wood and breaking rocks is faster with two people, so you need a physical labour team; meanwhile food provides the energy needed to climb cliff faces and carry heavy relics, so you'll need a chef to gather plants and make dinner. 'We really wanted people to go back and eat at the base camp together,' says Richard Jones, creative director for Konami Digital Entertainment. 'This way, the base camp becomes a place to return to – a sort of communal kitchen.' Sign up to Pushing Buttons Keza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gaming after newsletter promotion Unlike most modern survival sims, it's not totally open-ended: your aim is to discover more and more of the islands, which brings a sort of escape room feel to things. It's also possible to go back and re-try levels to get a quicker time. Despite the family look and feel, there are some interesting and quite demanding physics-based challenges with multiple solutions. There's a nice humour and lightness to the game as well, perhaps an inevitability considering that Dennison and many of the development team at Unity's Stratford-upon-Avon office came from Codemasters and Rare. Will Konami bring more of its classic titles to Switch 2? 'We know there are other Konami teams who are interested in this platform – we'll be able to help them,' says Jones. 'So yeah, fingers-crossed we'll see some more Switch 2 projects from Konami.' For now Survival kids feels like a great test case for the new console's family oriented game sharing.
Daily Mirror
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Survival Kids is a Switch 2 launch game primed to scratch that co-op itch
If you're seeking a fun and frantic way to indulge in some co-operative chaos on the Nintendo Switch 2's launch day, Survival Kids' crafting and exploration exploits have you covered. Survival Kids is shaping up to be a perfectly fine survival co-op adventure that should make a good entry point to the genre for both younger players and newcomers. With the first-party launch lineup for Nintendo Switch 2 looking light aside from Mario Kart World and Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour, the responsibility to make playing the new hybrid on day one exciting also falls to third-party devs. Enter Survival Kids: an unabashedly family-orientated co-op experience from Konami that surprisingly doesn't go big on survival aspects – at least in a traditional hardcore genre sense. Rather, it's exactly the kind of isometric all ages adventure you'd expect from a game with an art style and vibe this colourful. Is it the most revolutionary way to explore, plunder, and craft with friends? Definitely not. But it is a good way to pull your hair out either online or locally with a buddy or two – and potentially a great showcase of the new console's GameChat feature. Despite the clear emphasis on co-op here, as strange as it seems, I was pleased to see that Survival Kids is fully playable in single-player too. True, this means taking away the typical challenge that comes from trying to co-ordinate whenever you need to, say, shift a large log, glide over a ravine, or pack up and pack down your base camp together. That said, it's still nice to at least have the option to go it alone, and the one level I played in handheld mode by myself certainly demonstrated how exploration can still be enjoyable as a solo player. It cuts out much of the co-op noise that comes from trying to survive as a kid who has washed up onto a deserted island with others, which I recognise mightn't be the intended experience. But hey, it works! For the most part, though, being successful in Survival Kids means working together as part of a team. I discovered this very early on in the game's tutorial level, Lesson Lagoon, where me and three others quickly got to grips with the regular routine of chopping wood for resources, manoeuvring heavy objects (both alone and with another), as well as cooking and eating the local fruits in order to maintain a good level of stamina. If it all sounds fairly standard as far as survival games go, that's probably because it is. But mixed in with such familiar escapades are a whole bunch of additional tools unique to each island biome to help keep the co-operative action fresh. While Lesson Lagoon does a good enough job onboarding you of what it takes to successfully traverse from one side of a level to another, it was really in Boom Flower Bay where the game's true potential comes alive. Flowers that go (you guessed it) 'boom' play a big role in this stage, with plenty of walls that need exploding peppered in to reveal new pathways and fires that can only be lit from afar. Both problems had me scratching my head in ways I previously didn't have to, with solutions that eventually made sense based on the tools I had available to me. My hope is that such item-based puzzles grow to become deeper and more complex the more levels roll on – especially since Konami explained that the difficulty of them won't change too much based on whether you're playing alone or in multiplayer. Environmental puzzles are situated absolutely everywhere in Survival Kids, and completing most of them are necessary to locate and unearth all the essential components required to build the raft that will end the level and lead to the next. Initially I was worried that Survival Kids segmenting its island into specific biomes as opposed to one continuous map would make exploring and crafting less fun an endeavour, when actually it's allowed Konami to sprinkle in all kinds of extra challenges. Beating a level with friends in the quickest time possible results in a higher star rating, for instance, while totally optional collectable treasures and glyphs need to be found to achieve that tricky 100% completion and even unlock new looks for your custom character. To me, to you The intention with Survival Kids is clearly to appeal to a wide audience, creating scenarios in which parents and kids or close friends can roam around together and enjoy bite-sized doses of survival fun. However, once you've achieved a three-star rating for each level, I do worry (aside from collectibles and glyphs) what about the game will keep people coming back for more. Because while the two stages I played as part of the demo lasted a good 30 or so minutes, once you know the solution I can easily see them able to be beaten in half that time – probably even less when playing alone. Fortunately, forever accompanying you along the way are the quirky British overtones of comedian Marcus Brigstocke, who does a lot to add some much-needed narrative texture to all your survival-led antics. He acts almost as the group's fun uncle of sorts, unafraid to cheekily rib you about whatever outlandish circumstance you currently find yourself in, like a god willing to continually poke fun. It'd be nice if his comments were more reactive to the specific movements I was making, but then the canned narration does a good enough job. Similar to Amelia Tyler in Baldur's Gate 3 or Danny Wallace in Thomas Was Alone before it, Brigstocke brings a lot to the overall Survival Kids experience – to the extent that I'd now find it hard to play without hearing him take the mick. As a Nintendo Switch 2 launch release, Survival Kids is clearly looking to take advantage of the hardware's new features. It does so by heavily emphasising co-op, of course, but then goes a step further by placing the console's new GameChat functionality front and centre on the main menu screen. It's bold! Though not available to try during my preview session, it's not hard to see how communicating – or rather, failing to communicate – will be just as hilarious over Wi-Fi with your friends' faces on the screen as it is when played with three players locally. However, as cool as it might be, it's a novelty I can't imagine will be all that additive to the core Survival Kids co-op experience. In several ways, Survival Kids is about as charming a family-oriented co-op adventure as you'd expect, with plenty of island-based activities primed to have you and others squabble about how to achieve a goal or where to go next. It's not revolutionary but is perfectly placed to give families and younger players something to sink their teeth into during the Nintendo Switch 2 launch window when the thought of playing yet another race in Mario Kart World grows a tad tiresome. The two island levels I played made chopping and shifting around resources surprisingly challenging; I just hope that the unique tools and environmental puzzle quirks prove equally as creative in the game's later hours. No Nintendo console launch is complete without adequate third-party support, and in this instance, Konami has families covered with Survival Kids.
Metro
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
Survival Kids hands-on preview – the biggest Switch 2 third party exclusive
GameCentral speaks to the makers of Konami's latest reboot: a four-player co-op game that is the most exciting third party exclusive for the Nintendo Switch 2. No one can complain about the volume of launch games being released alongside the Nintendo Switch 2, but unfortunately they're almost all ports and remasters of existing third party titles. There's only two first party Nintendo games – Mario Kart World and Welcome Tour – and only two exclusive third party titles: this and future racer Fast Fusion, from Fast RMX maker Shin'en. That's a budget-priced indie title though, while this is a reboot of an old Konami franchise that we happen to have been fans of back in the late nineties. We're not even going to speculate as to why Konami keeps reviving smaller franchises like this, while leaving Castlevania on the shelf, but it's easy enough to see why a four-player co-op game with a family friendly vibe would seem like a good idea for a Switch 2 launch title. We got to play multiple levels from the game at a preview event last week, and it was a lot of fun. We're not sure it's rather basic visuals were the best idea, since they can seem rather cheap and childish, but this is a solid game with some enjoyably meaty puzzles, that might just end up as the Switch 2's first hidden gem. Survival Kids was originally released in 1999 for the Game Boy Color, although in Japan and Europe it was called Stranded Kids – for subsequent entries it switched to the name Lost In Blue in the West, the last of which was on the Wii in 2008. For once, the American name made more sense though, as the original is one of the very first entries in the survival game genre, more than a decade before the concept became more commonplace. As such, you foraged for food to keep you going, while trying to build structures and rafts in order to help you escape the desert island you were stuck on – think a cosy sim like Stardew Valley but with the ability to starve to death. 'We were looking through the back catalogue of Konami titles, looking for games that we thought would be ripe for doing an appropriate reinvention of. And you're absolutely right, the original game, on Game Boy Color, was an almost a template for what we now know as the survival game,' Konami creative director Richard Jones told us. 'It was very open-ended, it was very hard, there was a lot of trial and error – you really did have to bang your head against it, to actually get anywhere. But what we loved about it was the idea of kids on a desert island. 'You look on the cover of the original Game Boy Color game and there was always a boy and a girl, so there was always two kids but you only ever played a single-player game. So, one of the first thoughts was: 'How do we make this into a multiplayer game for modern audiences?'' The new Survival Kids has the same premise as the original, in the sense that it's also a Robinson Crusoe simulator, but it's not a survival game and nobody's going to be dying because they couldn't find enough coconuts. Instead, it's a co-operative puzzle game, with up to four of you stranded on a series of islands (which are actually giant turtles). There's something about collecting Harmony Stones as well, but basically you start off on one island and have to adventure across it to build a raft to get to the next. You have a little base camp you can build (and pack up to move elsewhere) where you can cook food to give you a stamina boost – which is need to move or dig up some heavier objects – and swap between various items like a fan (for producing wind), an umbrella (for gliding short distances) and a fishing rod (not just for fishing but snagging distant items and switches), whose blueprints you discover along the way. Raw materials such as wood, stone, and vines have to be mined but this is a trivial task, especially if someone else helps at the same time, to speed things up. Although if you're playing with young kids just bringing resources to the crafting box is useful busywork, that starts to become slightly reminiscent of Overcooked. These materials are often used to craft climbing nets and bridges, but you soon get onto more complex puzzles, that involve things like controlling platforms to access new areas and neutralising statues that spit projectiles at you. We never got stuck while playing but some of the puzzles did take some brainpower, which is encouraging for adult players. 'That's exactly the balance we were trying to make,' says Jones. 'We wanted the systems to be accessible, so the crafting box where everyone can contribute and throw things in, and then the item pops out. So rather than inventory management and having to go scrabbling around for loads and loads of resources we wanted to make the crafting simple and the stamina bar simple and very understandable.' 'But at the same time, you can still make puzzles challenging. The idea was never to make this something you could just breeze through. The idea was to make the systems and the gameplay easy to understand and then the challenge in the puzzle and the actual execution of it,' he adds. Although all the previous Survival Kids games were made in Japan, this reboot is by Unity – the makers of the Unity graphics engine, whose logo you will have seen before the start of many indie and AA titles. However, unlike Epic Games and their Unreal Engine, Unity has never made a game themselves before and this is their first proper foray into development. 'We have, behind the scenes, for years, helped developers who are using Unity engine to achieve what they need to. So, we've helped with performance optimisation, porting Unity across to a new platform, and this is really helpful because it allows us to production verify all new versions of Unity,' studio head and producer Andrew Dennison told us. 'We can test them on customer projects, but there's a limit to that as the project's not yours and there's maybe only a narrow window of what you're looking at. 'So the opportunity we saw, probably about three years ago, was 'How could we do something bigger?' What if, for a publisher, we built an entire game and that would let us test the breadth of the engine, and particularly if we could – which we somehow managed to do with this game – align it with a new platform launch. Because we can prove that Unity is ready for Nintendo Switch 2.' 'We met at Gamescom in 2022 and Unity were looking for a project. I was looking for an external studio to work on Konami IP. It soon became evident that we had lots of shared goals, lots of shared appetites, for what we wanted to do. We both wanted to do multiplayer co-op, social game experience with all the family – so that was how it started,' adds Jones. 'The game started off completely platform agonistic. We knew what we wanted to make, we knew our target audience, and this time, in the planning stages, the next Nintendo console was way off in the distance, we didn't know much about it. 'It wasn't until we got a little further into that, after pre-production and into the early parts of development that the release window started to solidify and that aligned with our schedule. And that was when we first sat up and started thinking seriously that we could hit the launch date with this.' Maths fans will have already worked out that that means Unity made the whole game in less than three years. Just over two, in fact, according to Dennison, who reveals that full development only started in March 2023. Compared to the five or more years that a modern AAA game can take – and the terrible cost for the developer if it's not an instant hit – and suddenly Survival Kids' modest visuals make much more sense. 'I don't have an up-to-date reference for how AAA studios are running things but I know for sure that there are economies to be had by keeping a team tight, well-organised, and what was great working with Konami – and I genuinely mean this – is there was a ticking clock,' says Dennison. 'You have this much time and that forces you to make the right decisions. We knew a window, so we knew we had to have the game done by end of '24, so we'd have enough time. And it's really useful to have those deadlines, because it forces you to make those decisions.' The game features a relatively realistic physics engine, so that if something drops in a river it will float downstream and have to be collected later, while explosive fruits can be rolled or catapulted in the air. You can play on your own – and we did for about 20 minutes as a test – and it's fine, but it's much more enjoyable when everyone is running around, trying to grab the glory for themselves and blaming every mistake on someone else. 'Some of the emergent silliness comes out of the physics. When you cut a tree down it will roll down a slope into the water when you're you're trying to grab it,' says Jones. 'It's amazing how difficult it can be for two people to carry a log.' The game can be played by up to four players online and that was simulated at the event, by playing with other journos. There's also a two-player couch co-op mode which you can play on the same console and with only one Joy-Con each. This worked great too and means you can play it co-op without needing to pay for Nintendo Switch Online or anything else. More Trending We can't say how much longevity the game has until we've played the whole thing but there are various secrets and costume unlockables, which along with the time you take to finish determine how many stars you're awarded when you complete an island, with the biggest one we played taking over 30 minutes. Although we suspect the rather bland visuals, and a price tag that seems just a tad too high, are going to be obstacles, we enjoyed our time with Survival Kids and can't wait to play it more with friends and family. In terms of gameplay our main concern now is how the game balances it's very straightforward early levels with the more complex puzzles of later on, but as long as it's a smooth segue it should be fine. You can never have enough couch co-op games and while this doesn't necessarily seem like it needed to be a Switch 2 exclusive in order to exist, it certainly does fit Nintendo's vibe, while also being something novel and different compared to the other launch titles. Formats: Nintendo Switch 2Price: £44.99Publisher: KonamiDeveloper: UnityRelease Date: 5th June 2025 Age Rating: 3 Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: Games Inbox: Will Nintendo games ever come to PC? MORE: The original Switch is still a better option than the Switch 2 – Reader's Feature MORE: Nintendo is bringing one of its exclusive games to PC claims Microsoft website
The Verge
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
May 23, 2025 at 8:25 AM EDT
Some Game Boy games for your long weekend. Nintendo just updated its Switch Online subscription service with a nice mix of four retro handheld titles: the survival game Survival Kids, sci-fi shooter Gradius: Interstellar Assault, puzzler Kirby's Star Stacker, and RPG The Sword of Hope.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Starseeker, Silksong and Other New Switch 2 Games Revealed During Stream Freeze
For those who woke up early to watch the Nintendo Direct unveiling the new Switch 2, the majority of the hour-long livestream went off without a hitch, unveiling features and new games. But for a brief minute, both the YouTube and Twitch livestreams were frozen solid, with only audio coming through. That just so happened to be when several brand-new games were revealed to the world for the first time. Starseeker: Astroneer Expeditions, System Era's follow-up to its cozy space base builder Astroneer, was one of the games that "debuted" without visuals. The upcoming game looks to take its predecessor's cute astronaut adventures to the next level, setting players up with a space station-size crew to take on planet- and system-size tasks. The game comes out in 2026. Enter the Gungeon 2, a 3D successor to the popular 2D roguelike Enter the Gungeon, also had its first look demoted to audio-only. The new game preserves the "bullet hell" of its predecessor, taking on big bosses with bigger guns from a tilt-shifted perspective. While some reveals had narration that clued viewers into what was happening, other reveals went overlooked until later. That's how I (and many others, it seems) missed that Silksong, the long-awaited spin-off of the fan-favorite Hollow Knight, was revealed in a pair of clips that lasted around 5 seconds…but only for those who rewatched the recorded Nintendo Direct. Silksong: Hollow Knight, as it's properly called, is coming later this year. Nintendo Direct live watchers were halfway through the reveal of Survival Kids when the stream froze. This cartoony survival game is based on a cult classic Konami title from decades ago, according to GamesRadar. Survival Kids is a launch title for the Switch 2, arriving with it on its June 5 release date. The freeze also took out visuals for reveals of several existing games that the Switch 2 would be getting. Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition and Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade to Nintendo's upcoming console, as well as Capcom's underrated Japanese myth-themed fantasy strategy game Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess.
