Of course, you could pass the time by building up your campsites. There is one you can only complete at night, but because the game doesn’t have an easy way to pass the time from day to night, you might just end up waiting around for a while. Some of these activities are charming, such as a choose-your-adventure book that tests your knowledge of the immediate area.
You gain experience for nearly everything you do in Haven Park, from picking up a twig to completing a fetch quest, but the amount of XP you receive is universally low, and it often fails to reflect the time invested into completing each activity.
The entire experience point system feels unnecessary to Flint’s journey, and some of the skills you unlock really don’t seem like they should be tied to leveling up. Unfortunately, these elements are handled haphazardly. When this happens, you’ll be able to unlock new skills that’ll help make your island excursion a bit easier. When you gain a certain amount of XP, you’ll level up. These logs, rags, and girders don’t repopulate, and if you’re not careful, you could end up painstakingly searching every nook and cranny of the island, looking for whatever tiny supplies you might have missed to score some experience points. Supplies around the island are initially abundant, but it doesn’t take long for them to start drying up. As players craft elements for these campgrounds, visitors will appear out of nowhere to hang out, offer compliments on your caretaking, and occasionally send you on a quest. The campgrounds he discovers across the island are dilapidated, and he’s going to need all the wood, metal, fabric, and mushrooms he can find to revitalize them. Flint may be on an epic quest of the soul, but his actual journey across this island is nothing more than fetch quests, crafting, and scrounging for supplies. Okay, admittedly, that last sentence makes this game sound grandiose when really it’s rather humble. She’s along for the ride, and throughout his journey, the two will share some warm exchanges and words of encouragement as Flint discovers whether he has what it takes to fulfill his destiny. Haven Park casts players in the role of Flint, a little yellow bird who sets out to rehabilitate an island of campgrounds once maintained by his grandmother.
And ultimately, that is what’s most important when making a game and what’s missing most from Haven Park. Their wholesome nature may be at the forefront of what players see, but behind those edifying facades are solid gameplay mechanics that actually drive the experience. However, you have to remember there is more to them than just the warm feelings they feed into your soul. Those two titles are wonderful sources of inspiration for any indie developer looking to ride the current wave of wholesome games. And it wears those inspirations on its sleeve, with an entirely animal cast, a beautiful island to explore, a bird lead character and little campsites where visitors will ask some favors of you á la Pocket Camp. The developer, Bubble Studio, mentions the indie darling as one of the inspirations behind the project, along with Animal Crossing. If you watch the trailer for Haven Park and think to yourself, “Boy, this sure does look like A Short Hike,” that’s intentional.