Year: 2021
Rating: E
Time Played: 281 minutes / 4.68 hours
When I started playing video games with my 3-year-old daughter, I purposely tried to find games that favored exploration. Then I could let her dictate where we would go and what we would do. And while the big empty world of Sable was a good start, I thought Haven Park was cute enough and open-ended enough to fit the Animal Crossing niche. And this way I wouldn’t have to restart my Animal Crossing island either. Even if it was a little short, Haven Park gave me some quality time with my daughter.
With a story that’s closer to A Short Hike, Haven Park allows you to build up campsites based scattered around an island. You get to choose what to put in each site, at which point campers will arrive and demand other amenities. It was difficult to keep track of all the different sites, but repairing the broken bridges, fences, and lamps was also an engaging game mechanic. The clean graphics had a simplicity that evoked a tilt-shift style similar to the Link’s Awakening remake. Even with a toddler dictating how we played, there still wasn’t much more than about four hours of gameplay here.
While we finished a fair amount of the game’s achievements, I found portions of this game frustrating. First, the map could have been much better. I spent more time trying to figure out where we were on the island using the marginally useful map than actually playing the game. There’s also a bit of a curve for building materials. It left me without necessary crafting items for the limited camp decorations through a good chunk of the game. Near the end, I had too much of everything. Despite receiving the “fast travel” option at the end of the game, it isn’t as fast as it could be and it didn’t help to motivate us to finish the rest of the achievements.
A cute camp management game similar to Animal Crossing and A Short Hike, I give Haven Park 3.5 stars out of 5.
1/2
