There's a lot of genres I'm into, but relatively few that I'll voraciously consume whenever they appear. With so many games coming out all the time it's hard to stay up to date with something as broad and popular as, say, RPGs or adventure games; however, those few very specific genres that I do fixate on tend to be released in what I would consider to be a moderate rate: Explormers, Soulslikes, Zeldalikes, and photography sims. I didn't know a whole lot about Ustwo Games's Alba: A Wildlife Adventure going in beyond its environmentalism message and the fact that they give you a camera (well, a phone camera, but it counts) to take pictures of wild animals around the fictional Spanish Mediterranean island of Secarral. Sold.

The actual game isn't that much more elaborate. The eponymous heroine, Alba, has journeyed to Secarral as she does every year to spend a week with her abuelos on their picturesque island home. Inspired at a young age by wildlife and taking pictures with her abuelito's camera, the current pre-teen Alba is an adventurous sort who quickly joins forces with the outspoken islander girl Inés to start a wildlife protection organization to clean up the island's trash and catalogue its various animals. An unscrupulous property developer and his plans for a luxury resort built on the remains of the island's ailing nature preserve becomes the closest the game has for a narrative arc, but this is more a game like A Short Hike or a life-sim like Animal Crossing: there's always tasks to do, collectibles to find (in this case, ticking off checklist items and scanning those animals with an identification phone app), and forward progress to be made in the story, but they tend to serve as suggestions more than directing your path.

That said, however, the progression is such that each new day that passes on the island unlocks more for you to do—for instance, you won't get the recycling bag until a few days in, at which point you can start picking up loose trash that isn't near a bin—so it might be best to mainline the story first and have the whole island to yourself to explore in the open post-game. This iterative process also gives you the means of performing carpentry on broken birdhouses and bridges or using a first aid kit on injured animals; since time only moves on when you've decided you've done all you can, the game has to hold back content in this manner to give later days something more to do than mainline the handful of story missions each twenty-four hour period provides. It mostly works as a system, but did make it feel like I could've either had all those tools from the outset or that I'd known beforehand and just moved as quickly as I could to the final day to avoid too much backtracking across the island.

Gameplay-wise, everything is very accessible and streamlined, presumably because the game is trying to appeal to younger audiences and those that might not play games often due to the perceived level of violence involved and/or reflexes required. To take a qualifying photo of an animal for scanning purposes it simply needs to be in the center of the viewfinder: that's easy enough for animals that don't move much like the domestic cats and pigeons around the village, but less so for the fast-moving raptors and swifts that never seem to land for a breather. However, by leading the quicker targets a little it's not an insurmountable task to capture them all. Likewise, the wildlife manual you are given early on provides a clear idea of what each animal looks like and even the noises they make, if you're in a position to make use of directional sound. The trash pick-up and construction mini-games are simpler still, since it takes a single button press. This isn't a game interested in challenging you too much, is the takeaway here, and is meant more as a relaxing few hours performing simple tasks that might along the way inspire you to take better care of your surroundings for the sake of your neighbors, human and otherwise.

This is definitely the sort of game that can be wholesome to a fault. Everyone on the island is named and has a distinct personality, though the game's too short to develop most of them beyond their roles as helpful adults, and Inés in particular is a non-stop ball of energy that always has some task or other for you to do most days. The game reminded me quite a bit of A Short Hike in graphical terms also, making use of a stylized cel-shaded look with simplified polygons that gels well with the simpler gameplay. The game features the music of Spanish folk musician Lorena Álvarez, giving it an authentic Mediterranean feel; I think the last time I enjoyed music with this particular sound in a video game was way back when with Suikoden IV's La Mer. While relatively short with a three-to-four hour predicted completion time (according to HowLongToBeat at least, though I can now verify) the island is fairly sizeable and gives you plenty to fill that time with, whether you just want to see its Scooby-Doo plot to its conclusion or do a whole lot of animal photography and clean up in the process. While I wish it could've had more substance in almost every aspect, I can't fault a game this wholesome nor one that has its nailed down its vibe so perfectly nor really one that lets me take pictures of cute little critters all day. As has always been the case, just give me a camera and a checklist and I'll be there.

Rating: 4 out of 5.