There should always be a market for games like Adorable Adventures. Creatively spearheaded by Steven ter Heide, of Horizon Zero Dawn fame, Adorable Adventures is a weapons grade wholesome title that has a lot to say, all the while cementing itself as a delightfully acceptable on-ramp for younger gamers into exploring sprawling open worlds, while simultaneously offering up a twee and thoroughly chilled out affair for older folks who might be looking to unwind.
Adorable Adventures PS5 Review
The premise of Adorable Adventures is thoroughly saccharine. In Adorable Adventures, players are cast as Boris, an adorable young boar who lives in a forest park with his family until a forest fire separates him from his siblings. So it is then that Boris must locate his wayward family members and it is this central concept around which Adorable Adventures wraps its welcoming open world exploration gameplay loop.
With its big bouncy and easy to read font, it’s clear right from the get go that Adorable Adventures skews toward a younger audience and that’s an important fact to note because if you’re an older, more experienced gamer, you’ll find nothing to really challenge you here. However, that shouldn’t suggest that Adorable Adventures holds no appeal for those more wrinkled gaming savants, as it offers up a supremely relaxing, endlessly twee and opulently rich open world that serves as a perfect refuge from the more relentlessly violent fare that is so prevalent.
As charming little boar Boris who must find his way back to his missing family members, taking in all of the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, flora and fauna along the way. Boris is a joy to control, too. Hugely responsive, a slight tilt of the left analogue stick has the little fella starting into a trot, while a full tilt has him breaking into a charmingly frenzied turbo trot, while holding down the dash button lets the furry little fella let rip into a spirited sprint (complete with hilarious drift style ‘handbrake’ turns) that are essential to getting decent times in Adorable Adventures clutch of racing side missions.
Adorable Adventures is quite simply overflowing with charm and neat little moments that can’t help but twist the sides of your mouth. Leave Boris alone for a spell and a butterfly will land on his snout, his furry face twitching playfully as he tries to understand just what this colourful winged visitor is doing on the end of his nose. Elsewhere, when Boris attempts to mantle up onto ledges and surfaces, his back end hangs low while his little legs struggle to pull him up in adorably exaggerated fashion. Adorable Adventures is full of beautiful and memorable little touches like these.
The crux of Adorable Adventures gameplay is the open world that it permits players to explore and Boris’ nose which acts as a somewhat unique wayfinder of sorts. You see, though the game world is actually pretty large, Boris can effectively orient himself thanks to an incredible sense of smell which provides a starkly coloured crowd of bubbles emanating from the direction he should take.
Where things become a little more sophisticated is that Boris can very easily find himself knocked off course by another smell that is unknown to him (much as I imagine boars probably function in the real world). Luckily, Boris can use a handy Scent-O-Meter to exclude certain smells in order to concentrate on others but only once he ‘collected’ a sufficient number of smell identifications to do so and it’s this side of the gameplay loop which will arguably be the most familiar to regular gamers.
Beyond their worth to the story, once Boris finds his brothers and sisters he can work in tandem with them to access areas of the park that were previously unreachable by himself, opening up the world of his forest park that much more as a result. Adorable Adventures is, at its heart, a collect-a-thon. Sure, there are side missions to do which allow you to take part in races, snap photos of the local landscape, complete colour patterns and other such feats of boarish bravery, but by and large, you’ll be spending the majority of your time collecting everything from flowers, plants, litters and a whole other range of bits and bobs.
Now again, this very much ties into the notion that Adorable Adventures isn’t purpose built for gamers over a certain age and this is completely fine, because the game leans into its younger audience with an educational vector. When Boris finds different flowers these are sketched into a notebook. Identify all of the smells belonging to a particular plant or smell and you get some basic facts and sometimes gastronomical tips on how to use them.
Adorable Adventures also doubles up as an educational module on boars more generally too, providing a fascinating insight into these frequently misunderstood creatures that folk of all ages will find compelling as neat factoids on the furry beasts come thick and fast. Elsewhere, Boris is encouraged to pick up litter and dispose of it in nearby bins to keep the environment around him clean. In essence, Adorable Adventures is a game that encourages you to visit your local wildlife parks and nature reserves, to immerse yourself in the natural bounty of the world that we’re still lucky enough to be able to enjoy and find peace in. It’s about picking up litter, cleaning your natural spaces and living within them without destroying them.
Visually speaking, Adorable Adventures is something of a treat. Not only is Boris and his family beautifully brought to life with all of the authentic animations and movements one would expect, but the game world is rather easy on the eyes as well. The lush rural environments aren’t just beautifully rendered, they’re reactive too as branches and bushes find themselves pushed aside as Boris makes his way through them, rather than just being left in a static state as they often tend to be in other games.
Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that the lack of a proper map to help guide you towards bins and points of interest that you might need to return to often results in a lot of wasted plodding about, while a sizable amount of game engine jank exists, sometimes allowing Boris to get stuck in places he shouldn’t be (though a handy ‘unstick’ button remedies such accidents in a jiff). Not great, sure, but hardly game breaking either.
We don’t really have many games like this which so expertly straddle the educational and the entertaining with such aplomb, though Empire of the Ants is broadly similar conceptually, it doesn’t quite open its arms so wide for the younger folk as Adorable Adventures certainly does and this is where its main appeal lies (and is also reflected in its budget price point). For parents who might be reading this and like the idea of open world games, but quite rightly do not want to force their young ones through the traumatic themes of something like Grand Theft Auto, Adorable Adventures is a perfect way to get them experiencing open world design at an early age, thanks to its gentle on-ramp difficulty and heart-warming subject matter.
Though Adorable Adventures is extraordinarily simple for older gamers and seems to lack ambition, its impact arguably extends beyond its offering as a video game, at least to younger folk anyhow as it seeks to expand their knowledge of their relationship with the natural world that surrounds them and, of course, the sprightly boars that serve as Adorable Adventures protagonists. A great introduction to open world design for new games and the young folk alike, Adorable Adventures also makes a good case for itself as a relaxing refuge from the worries of the world, one where you can get lost in the beauty of nature, smell flowers and frolic about with your boar siblings. I’m not sure about you, but I absolutely need that sort of wholesome in my life right now.
Adorable Adventures is out now on PS5.
Review code kindly provided by PR.