Virtual Villagers: The Lost Children

by: Sammy

Where's your GPS Satellite Phone when you need it?

 One day you are loving life on your beautiful hidden island called Isola. You had explored every inch, had visited every corner. That is except for the mysterious cave that had not been fully surveyed. Being the curious little villager that you are it was only a matter of time before you discovered a hidden opening behind some thick vines. Luck is not on your side this day as you and your fellow adventurer slip thru and end up on a totally new part of the island: the west side! But what is more surprising is when you arise to find you were never alone on your tropical oasis; you find dirty, hungry looking children. Who are these kids and more importantly what happened to their parents? You must now uncover the mysteries of these native inhabitants, and oh yes try to survive and thrive as well.

 You play the game from a god like perspective. You can "see" what the villagers are thinking as well as doing and you can also try to guide/train them to do what you would like them to do. Of course free will does also factor into the equation so you have to be persistent sometimes to get your way. Anyway, you guide your little villager by clicking on him/her and dragging to where you would like them to be. So, to provide food for your tribe you need to train a villager to fish, to do this just drag an adult into the ocean and they will figure it out pretty fast. To gain some technology points, drag your would be rocket scientist to the lab table and they will start researching. Technology points are very important because you can use them to improve life on the island. For example you can increase their farming, exploration, engineering, medicine, science, and culture. As you can imagine with improved farming they could grow more food. Now children can't do any of these jobs until they grow up but they can help collect objects and some food. Oh, and one more thing you might be wondering; where do new villagers come from? Well, here is your chance to be cupid. Either drop a man on a women or vise versa and if they hit it off they will go "indoors". A little later if all goes well the stork will arrive. So, you will use these basic principles to build up your village, train your tribe, and solve all the mysteries.

 The game also has a really cool feature called "real-time" where the island inhabitants will continue to progress even when you are not actively playing! This is really good as long as you keep an eye on them from time to time. Let's just say if you don't your poor little villagers are doomed. Fortunately, in the options there is a Pause incase you don't want this feature, so you can just pause the game before exiting.

 If all of this is sounding too difficult don't sweat it! There is an excellent in game tutorial that will guide you thru the basic mechanics of the game and its features. You can get up to speed surprisingly fast. When the game first starts everything is at its most basic level and you start building from there. Some of your initial goals will be to teach the villagers to fish, build a hut, and to start a fire. The game play is really relaxing and it's even fun just to watch your villagers to see what they will do on their own. However, you can't watch too long before giving them a guiding hand. Speaking of time you will need to keep an eye on the clock or before you know it hours will have passed, for real!

 What is fascinating and challenging about a game like this is the unlimited ways in which the game can play out. It's hard to imagine any two games ever playing out the same. The ultimate goal is striking the right balance between how fast you grow your village and how fast the existing villagers learn the required skills they will need to solve the puzzles of the island. And all of this is mostly up to you.

 I first installed the game on my Windows Vista PC and ran into a slight problem when the game would not start up. However, this was easily fixed with a small simple download and after that everything went smooth. Just to be thorough I also installed on a PC with XP and everything was sooth sailing there. Once the game starts you are treated to some really nice ambient music that fits the game perfectly and also sounded very clear. The sound effects are also of good quality and mixed up enough as not to get redundant. While the graphics of the villagers tended to be a little blocky the backgrounds are of nice detail, but both work really well for the game as a whole. The game mechanics are very simple and intuitive, throw in the in game tutorial and you end up with a very gentle learning curve. The help is surprisingly short for a game that is so wide open. But if you are feeling a little lost you can find a really nice set of instructions and strategy guide from the company that created the game. However, I must warn that at the end of the strategy guide it does have some spoilers for the puzzles. It is clearly marked and you can easily view the page up to that point without seeing any of the spoilers if you don't want to.

 So, whether you are a fan of the series (Virtual Villagers: A New Home) or new to the genre in general, Virtual Villagers: The Lost Children has a lot of entertainment to offer. It's a really nice blend of Sim and Puzzle. If you have only played "Match 3" games up to this point then this just might open your eyes to a new world of Puzzle games.

Until next time,
Game On!

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