Have fun with all sorts of critters in this animal themed party game for Nintendo Switch.  Your hosts are a puppet lion and rabbit, but the two-player party games feature all sorts of real animals like penguins, pandas, giraffes, dogs, pigs, meerkats and many more!

There are three main modes of play.  In Tour Mode, two players compete in a succession of mini-games to win medals.  Whoever has the most medals at the end of the tour, wins.  You can choose how long you want to play.  There is also a mode where two players can just play a single mini-game.  There are also a selection of single player games as well.

The mini-games are short and require you to use the motion controls on the JoyCon controllers.  Tilt the controllers back and forth to steer a penguin in a sliding race.  Flick the controller to throw flower garland rings around meerkats or giraffes.  Make up and down motions to tell pigs or dogs when to jump or duck in a race.  There are many more games than that, too.  Before each game, you get instructions and picture cues on how to play.  You can even practice before the actual game.  But sometimes the instructions still aren’t very clear and it may take a few tries to get the hang of it.

Other than that, the other main problems with the game is that most of it is two-player only.  To get to the single player stuff, you have to unlock it by playing a short game in Tour Mode first.  And even then, there are only ten single player games out of the 30, and many of the others could’ve been implemented as single player games I think.  It can also work the other way around, too.  They could’ve implemented some four player mini-games as well.  I know it would require people having more JoyCons, but I think it would’ve increased the game’s potential.  Finally, this game looks like something that could’ve been done back on the Wii, two generations ago.  If you are tired of games featuring a lot of waggle, you may not like this one.  However, if you have kids who have never played the Wii, this would be new to them, so they may enjoy it more.

Kid Factor:

FUN! FUN! Animal Park is rated E with an ESRB descriptor of Mild Cartoon Violence.  There is a boxing kangaroo game, and animals can get bumped or fall off a ball or hit obstacles, but nobody gets hurt.  Reading skill is helpful for some of the text, but not necessary as most everything has picture cues.  A decent game for young kids overall.

Tags: Game Reviews