Entertainment Article
By: Benjamin Reisig Entertainment Writer 2/27/23 The Lil Gator Game is an homage to Legend of Zelda games but it implements its own unique gameplay mechanics and flavor. The goal of Lil Gator Game is to make the player feel like a kid playing with friends again. This theme of childhood adventure is present in aesthetics, gameplay, and story.
The Lil Gator Game follows a young Gator, his older sister, and his four friends. The main plot is extremely basic: the lil gator wants his sister to join him, so he creates an elaborate island-sized game to impress her. The main recurring characters are the four friends who will help guide players’ decisions by pointing out the moral faults in their plans. One thing that makes the game fun is that the lil gator is not written to always make responsible decisions. It is very humorous and nostalgic at times to see this kid rationalize decisions that are clearly not wise. The gameplay has a very satisfying loop to it. The main gameplay loop is: explore, find items/characters, interact with, and repeat. The game clearly tells players that it is exploration heavy, by not providing the player with a map of the island. One main part of the gameplay that is lacking is the “combat”. Nothing in this game can hurt the player. There is no combat in the game. There are cardboard boxes painted with monsters all over the island, but they are the only sort of “combat” in the game. Four or five boss fights would have improved the game by utilizing the combat features in the game. The main collectibles in the game include tissue paper and cardboard, which are found by beating “enemies”. These pieces are used to purchase cosmetic items like hats and shields. The big collectible in the game is friends. Like, literal people. They function similarly to stars in 3D Mario games. Once a player finds a friend, they have to do some simple challenges for them before they return to the playground. The fun part of this is seeing how expansive the playground gets, similar to the Waddle Dee town from Kirby and the Forgotten Land. |
After the main story is finished, completing the game to 100% is easy, However, it’s not very fun. After the plot is done, the only things left to do are to find the remaining friends and defeat all the enemies. To do this, the players are given two items: a megaphone for finding friends and a phone for pointing out where enemies are.
Finding the rest of the friends is fun because even after finding them, a player still needs to do something for them to add them to their playground. However, tracking down the rest of the enemies is a chore. It is literally just 30-40 minutes of following an arrow to press the A button a few times. Besides the lackluster end, the story mode was all very fun. It took me five hours to finish and one hour of that was spent on the post game. For $20, this game is a must play for any casual gamer. Overall, I give this game a 7/10, and I recommend finishing the story mode. |