“Alba: A Wildlife Adventure” might well be the most charming, cosy and optimistic games I’ve ever experienced. A game of such wholesome sincerity you’d be mistaken for thinking you were in an Enid Blyton story. The titular character Alba Singh is a young girl who travels to the fictional Spanish island of “Secarral” to visit her grandparents for a weeks long vacation. While there Alba reacquaints with her friend Ines, to form a wildlife rescue league. Being the burgeoning conservationists, these life long acquaintances decide to organise a petition to halt the construction of a gaudy luxury hotel by the local litigious mayor, that could potentially harm the local ecology. Together they rally the local community behind their noble cause, by restoring the neglected nature reserve and attract species considered extinct from the island.

What I find endearing is the objectives Alba must complete to ensure the preservation of the local fauna’s habitat, as well as the adverse dichotomy between the natural ecosystem and human industrialisation. Menial task’s such as cleaning up discarded rubbish, repairing damaged benches, bird houses and signs take on a greater significance in the context of this insulated adversity. As you explore the island, refurbishing dilapidated bridge’s and rehabilitating animals back into their natural habitats, you can document the creature’s you encounter via your phones camera. The captured images will then be catalogued on your mobiles companion app, a sort of encyclopaedia, displaying information about the different species you’ve photographed.

Alba encourages that inert photographer in all of us. As you adjust your stance, utilise the environment and position yourself to capture the perfect image for your journal. It helps too that this open world climate expedites this desire to explore. Though not detailed, the modest graphical style complements the simple, environmental message. Its vibrant hues and abstract aesthetic gives it a familiar, nostalgic quality to it. Reminiscent of those adolescent vacations you took abroad with your parents. Fleeting, indistinct images and sensations of inflatables hanging from a lattice fence or the encroaching heat that diminishes in the evening, but never fully relents. The only real problem with “Alba: Wildlife Adventure” is just how brief it is. With a clear schedule, you could probably rescue the island from gentrification and dereliction of natural habitats, in the time it takes to listen to Michael Jackson’s “Earth Song”.

Yet despite it’s succinct duration, roughly 2-4 hours for a casual play-through, “Alba: Wildlife Adventure” is about as far from cynical as you can get. Delivering a comprehensive narrative, in a short time frame, with a lead that can only communicate through the gestural shacking of her head, while advocating a cogent ecological message that isn’t sanctimonious or condescending. Alba’s excursion of conservation was as insightful as it was delightful. A legitimate pleasure that I wish lasted longer. And an insightful entry point for young children who are curious to learn about the preservation of our natural environment, without patronising them.