Tiny Island Survival has an interesting idea - what if a little incremental/exploration game took place on a single screen representing a single island? What could you do then, how much stuff would there be to do? I ultimately do not know, because it’s also a game that has ads so invasive I would rather shut it down and load it back up whenever they popped during gameplay, until it ultimately wore me down and I stopped playing. An interesting core idea, for sure, tho!
The core loop of the game is simple and manageable enough - you’re on an island and you can tap on things to have your character interact with them. Tapping on a tree - if you have the ax - will cut the tree down and net you lumber. Some items disappear when you interact with them, while other replenish over time. By cutting down specific trees, you open up a path to a mine where you can collect stone, or a clearing where vendors will come and trade resources for gold, and so forth. The story progresses as you explore the island, upgrading your tools by collecting resources in order to unlock more paths - although I would have enjoyed if the higher level trees and rocks had different visuals than the lower level ones - and so forth.
The ultimate problems are that everything you do takes away hearts and every time you sleep to recover hearts, an ad plays, and also that things take too long to respawn. I would’ve gladly thrown a few dollars at this game, but not the 10 it requires to remove ads. Especially combined with the overall pacing of the game, which really feels like it wants you to spend a lot of time doing nothing or waiting. That’s a darned shame.
I liked some ideas in Tiny Island Survival, but not enough to stick through all these ads. These things are so annoying.
