Lil Gator Game Review – Review

You should consider a copy of Lil Gator Game developed by MegaWobble to be an invitation–an invitation to cast away your everyday life and remember a time when you would relish the warm summer evenings you could spend outside until the sun came down. This 3D adventure game allows you to relive those carefree days while acknowledging that they can’t always be forever, and that’s ok.

You grew up playing imaginary games with your sister who could cook up tales of grandeur for the two of you to make believe, playing games of legendary heroes clad in green. Thankfully, you play as a crocodile, so you have that covered. Can you guess where she pulled inspiration for their playtime? Well, one day she had to go to college and ever since hasn’t had the time to play like the pair used to. Now, she’s back in town and you have a mission to get your sister away from her laptop and back into the usual fun and games! To do this, you’ll need the help of your friends and an amazing amount of paper and plywood to build the most amazing playtime session she’s ever seen.

The general gameplay of Lil Gator Game is that of an open-world adventure. You roam freely and can climb anything so long as you can reach the top with your stamina meter. You’ll eventually unlock a glider and can even shield surf! This kind of freedom in gameplay is a real “breath of the fresh wild,” if you catch my drift. As you explore the collection of small islands and playgrounds, you’ll find characters that are a part of your game and have a quest for you, or ones that you haven’t brought into the fold of your adventure that you can convince to join after lending them a hand. Eventually, you’ll have gathered a large amount of support to construct bigger and more elaborate set pieces for your playtime–like a saloon or cathedral–to further impress your sister and hopefully get her to power down and play some games.

These tasks can range from collecting items, smashing cardboard monsters or even finding water supply pipes to turn on the water park. While the tasks themselves are relatively simple, they are all very well written. Each character feels honest and encapsulates the playground mindset of our childhood. That mindset is rooted at the core of Lil Gator Game and permeates into the playground-like gameplay itself; while the tasks are simple, exploring the park is really where the fun lies. All ropes become springy tight ropes, you can interact with rides, climb monkey bars, your shield slide can skim across water, and gliding and jumping never grow tired.

As far as character progression, outside of unlocking a larger zone to explore, there are also quest rewards that will grant you new hats, swords, shields and rocks that break the mould of expectation. Some even add abilities such as ragdoll physics to your character. While not all unlockables come with abilities, they do allow for extra flavour and personalization. More often than not, you pay for these new items with scraps of paper, the in-game currency that you amass by smashing the aforementioned cardboard monsters strewn about the island.

Lil Gator Game executes so well on what it sets out to do, even though the ambition lies more in a touching narrative about understanding the shifting priorities in our lives, than about the gameplay itself. It plays well and looks wonderful, though it does lean more on an artstyle than anything that would be considered graphically demanding. It runs flawlessly without any crashes or noticeable frame drops, and the sound design is calming with soft winds rustling through trees and acoustic instruments eliciting that warm summer feeling perfectly. The only fault may be that the gameplay is lacking in variety and somewhat simple. As well, its main story is on the shorter side.

This game is primarily geared to a younger audience, but even still if this type of relaxed experience suits you, I hope you accept the invitation to relive your childhood. And to parents introducing their kids to The Legend of Zelda, putting Lil Gator Game on ahead of Breath of the Wild might be a magical thing to see.