Game Reviews

Beastie Bay

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Beastie Bay
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| Beastie Bay

You may have already noticed, but management game-focused studio Kairosoft has slowly but surely been forging a new path into the role-playing genre.

Games like Epic Astro Story, Dungeon Village, and most recently Kairobotica have seen Kairosoft shift the focus from management to battling. It's been done slowly over the course of multiple titles, so you'd be forgiven for not really noticing it.

Beastie Bay, Kairosoft's own take on Pokemon, is where the studio goes full-blown turn-based battler. It sort of works, too, although the transition hasn't gone perfectly.

Like a beast

You've been washed up on an island with only your trusted pet to keep you company. After building a small base to live in, it's time to set out and explore what the island has to offer.

Each surrounding area on the island must first be unlocked in classic Kairosoft style by walking in a straight line and battling anything along the way. Once you clear an area its features become available, and you can build up your base using anything you find.

It's very much styled in the same way as Pokemon games, with turn-based action that involves super-effective moves, special abilities, and items to use. The game even acknowledges its inspiration through dialogue and creature names.

What's rather non-Kairosoft is that the combat is the main focus of the game. You collect other creatures and add them to your party, and then unlock other islands and travel over to those, battling anything that moves.

Exploring the surrounding areas is good fun, and as always in Kairosoft games there's plenty of depth. You're always unlocking new skills, houses, items, and monsters, and there's a great underlying humour throughout.

Keep it at bay

Balancing food, wood, coins, tourists et al is enjoyable enough, but we found ourselves less enamoured with Beastie Bay than with past Kairosoft games.

This is no doubt down to the shifted genre focus. There are elements of management in this game - the entire base-building bit is classic Kairosoft - but for the most part it's a turn-based battler. And, unfortunately, Kairosoft hasn't gone that down to a tee yet.

Beastie Bay's battles aren't an entertaining as Pokemon's, and they very quickly become dull. Fortunately, there's an 'Auto' button that takes care of the battles for you, but that in turn makes the action feel even more droney.

The battling ends up making the game feel like a bit of a slog in between the enjoyable exploring and base-building bits. For once, we won't rush to get back to a Kairosoft game as soon as we've finished writing the review.

But here's the thing: Beastie Bay is the first Kairosoft game to be free to download, with the option of paying to remove the ads. So, whether you think this sounds like your sort of thing or not, you might as well grab it and make your own mind up.

Beastie Bay

Beastie Bay injects a serious dosage of Pokemon into the regular Kairosoft management formula, and comes away with a deterrent for boredom, rather than the cure
Score
Mike Rose
Mike Rose
An expert in the indie games scene, Mike comes to Pocket Gamer as our handheld gaming correspondent. He is the author of 250 Indie Games You Must Play.