Reading about Survival Kids might lead you to believe it’s a completely distinct type of game from what you’re accustomed to. Upon encountering the term “cooperative survival crafting game,” your mind likely jumps to titles like Ark: Survival Evolved, Valheim, and Rust – games that have garnered significant popularity but can start to feel repetitive after extended play. Fortunately, Survival Kids is not just another clone of these games, and it offers a unique charm instead.
In Survival Kids, you collaborate with friends as you navigate a sequence of distinct stages, each filled with a structured and sequential collection of tasks to accomplish. Essentially, it’s a puzzle game infused with the mechanics of a survival-crafting game; the goal is to determine what actions to take and in which order. This involves felling trees, creating tools, and catching sea creatures for snacks. Unlike traditional survival crafting games, there’s no vast open world to explore, no tedious base construction, or dehydration indicators; it’s all the enjoyable aspects of these games without the tiresome elements.
In a multiplayer setting, the game is incredibly fun and hilarious! Approximately half the game was played alongside my friends or family, and we spent most of that time in fits of laughter due to our misadventures like falling into the ocean, accidentally losing crucial items, or playing harmless pranks on each other. A timer exists, and you’re incentivized for finishing levels quickly, but when playing with friends, these aspects become irrelevant. The game carries a similar feel to Human: Fall Flat, with its physics being just quirky enough to create some genuinely amusing scenarios.
Playing alone presents a unique challenge. While the puzzles are solvable on your own, they frequently necessitate extensive backtracking and lengthy treks, especially when transporting heavy objects. The assistance of others in carrying these heavier items can expedite the process, but solo play tends to be a tedious, often exasperating experience due to its slowness. Misplacing an item or accidentally dropping it into the water and having to restart can make progress frustratingly difficult, making one wonder if it’s worth continuing at times. Despite these challenges, playing alone is generally enjoyable, but it lacks some of the enjoyment that comes from teamwork.
Unfortunately, the game’s puzzles aren’t designed to leverage multiple players simultaneously, which hinders the full potential of multiplayer interaction. The challenges don’t incorporate tasks that require collaboration from different locations on the map, and there can be instances where one player is engaged in crucial activities while others might idle, engaging in non-essential tasks like fishing or cooking food. This issue becomes less prevalent as complexity increases in later levels, but it persists to some extent. It’s unlikely that a game such as this would require custom changes to each level based on the number of players, but it seems the game could benefit from more opportunities for cooperative play.
What makes Survival Kids stand out is the remarkable GameShare feature built into the Switch 2. This innovative function allows you to play the game simultaneously with another console that doesn’t own the title, much like the DS Download Play or It Takes Two’s Friend Pass, without any need for downloads. Utilizing advanced streaming technology similar to the Wii U’s GamePad, it operates seamlessly, boasting minimal latency and no disruptions during gameplay in my experience.
When GameShare is activated, it functions identically to an online or local multiplayer game of Survival Kids, with each player having their separate screen rather than a split screen. This feature even works on the original Switch, though it appears to only support up to two additional players at once. Nevertheless, it’s a superior alternative to splitscreen play if you have another console available, and I was genuinely impressed by its smooth performance.
I’ve found Survival Kids to be far more enjoyable than I initially thought, providing countless laughs for my group of friends as we navigated our way through surviving on a tropical island and eventually escaping. Despite its somewhat restrictive puzzle design, the game shines when everything falls into place, making it difficult not to get caught up in the joy of playing with loved ones, even if there are a few minor issues here and there.
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2025-06-13 18:46