Happy Birthdays

The saccharine visuals and bold colours will easily attract the eye and when new species appear you'll be begging for a photo mode. But that's only if you aren't looking at the endless lists or stats, or charging the ever-depleting energy banks. Interesting, educational and pretty, but ultimately soulless and a little boring.

From the creator of Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley, Happy Birthdays is an environmental managing game which lets you control temperature and humidity by making changes in the surface of your playground in a cube-like world. It is creative and highly detailed but not what we expected.

Happy Birthdays is a very colorful and highly addictive game in which you can experience a condensed version of the evolutionary process that has gotten us to this point in history – you know, minus the dragons and other mythical creatures. Having played the PlayStation 4 version for review, and after playing this new and revised version for the Nintendo Switch, I'm happy to report that it feels and plays great when playing at home or in Portable or Tabletop mode. This is a game that, in my opinion, is definitely worth a double dip, especially since you now get to enjoy it everywhere and at any time.

If you enjoy the god sim/sandbox genres you will be in for a treat with this title. Graphically, the game is adorable with some really lovely character models and landscapes but this game is so much more than cute dinosaurs and sweet looking lizards! Underneath it all is a surprisingly fun and addictive game with a huge amount of depth and replayability. A must have game for fans of the genre.

Happy Birthdays won't appeal to people looking for a linear story, but has endless possibilities to create, explore and experiment with worlds of entirely your own creation.

Slow, methodical, and deliberate, Happy Birthdays is at times frustrating, but only because it's genuinely engaging premise demands an attention to detail and level of care. Its biggest fault is that much of the experience occurs at the player rather than with the player. With that said, watching evolution occur on a grand scale through one simple action is an impressive and exciting feat. Cubes do require interaction to keep evolution moving smoothly, as well, so it isn't as if everything can be auto-played, just that more interactivity would have benefitted the game overall. At its core, Happy Birthdays is a creation simulator and one that won't resonate with everyone, but those who do end up jiving with the title will certainly find something worthwhile to take away.

From the legendary creator Mr. Yasuhiro Wada (TOYBOX Inc.), comes Happy Birthdays: a sandbox game in which players create cube-shaped worlds that give rise to diverse and unique lifeforms. With careful experimentation, players can shape the geography and alter the temperature of each world to create the conditions for life and witness the birth of an entire ecosystem!

Happy Birthdays is a laid-back experience that one can certainly lose hours to simply through micro-managing their vibrant Cube. However, with a barebones narrative and repetitive gameplay, it leaves much to be desired, including the urge to keep coming back over time. Indeed, this may be one celebration that is okay to miss.

Zooming in on your world and seeing little cities sprouting up with modern humans somehow managing to coexist alongside dinosaurs is certainly charming. It is not that Happy Birthdays is a bad game as its premise is certainly interesting. Unfortunately it is ultimately too shallow, an experience that requires little intervention from the player. If you can entertain yourself the monotony of raising and lowering land to perfectly facilitate your perfect breed of mouse, then perhaps you'll find something to enjoy in Happy Birthdays.

Now available on Nintendo Switch, Happy Birthdays is an interesting god game that brings a bit of revival to the genre. The new console edition has a number of improvements that make it easier and more accessible than the original title and will be perfect educational game for a family.