Virtual Villagers: The Lost Children Review

Virtual Villagers: The Lost Children Review

Review by Mick

A Strong Sequel To the Original

In Virtual Villagers: The Lost Children, you get to control the lives of your villagers and their children while you investigate the mysterious secret city. You are responsible for building shelter, gathering food, researching new technology and much more. The villagers will have to learn skills to gain healing skills and to solve other mysteries in the area. All this is going on in real time, even when you aren't playing.

Continue Uncovering Island Secrets

You start the game with a brief story about two villagers deciding to explore a mysterious cave. The two villagers enter the cave and shortly after slip into a river and are washed downstream and over a waterfall. They realize they are on the other side of the island in a native village, but the adults are strangely absent. Only the children are left and the two villagers take it upon themselves to help the children and do their best to raise them.

You will need to tell your villagers to perform tasks like gather food, research and build. The longer a villager performs a task the better they get at it. The villagers will continue doing what you have told them to most of the time, but occasionally they will explore or eat. The other goal besides staying alive is exploration. There are several mysteries that you need to solve as well as things that will help your villagers out.

Easy Controls

Controlling the game is very simple and only requires the mouse. To start a villager on a certain action you hold down the left mouse button on them which will pick them up and drop them near the activity you want them to perform.

The More Work a Villager Does, the More Skils They Gain

Tech points and food are the only consumables in the game. Tech points are earned by scientists and can be used to upgrade things like medicine, engineering, exploration and even culture. Food is gathered or grown and feeds the villagers when they are hungry.

Need Babies!

The villagers will eventually age and die so you will need to continuously replenish the population with babies. Children won't work until a certain age, but they still consume food and resources. There are several challenges to accomplish. Some of these are things you will accomplish by advancing in the game but some require you to explore and solve mysteries.

The graphics are 2D and pretty out of date, but that doesn't affect the gameplay. The graphics really add to the island theme and stay true to it. The sound effects and music are great and help create an immersive effect to the game. Once you start playing you will find yourself caring about your villagers like they were real people.

Game Progresses When You Aren't Playing

While this game will entertain you for a long time, you can't play it for much more than half an hour continuously without getting bored. Since you only need to tell the villagers what to do and they will keep doing it, your interaction is fairly minimal. This game is best played in small bursts and then leaving things to progress while you are away.

Conclusion - Another Solid Entry In the Virtual Villagers Series Worth Playing

Overall Virtual Villagers: The Lost Children is a great game that will entertain you for a long long time. Playing in short bursts means you won't have to spend all your time playing and having things progress while the game is off makes it interesting. Easy controls and a family friendly theme makes this game playable by anyone. With plenty of upgrades and mysteries this game is well worth the time.