Enchanting Escapade: A Journey Through Ambrosia Island

As I don another hoodie and resist the urge to activate the heating, the soft sands and sun-kissed stones of Ambrosia Island are undeniably charming. Moreover, Mythwrecked’s allure of an enjoyable, carefree stroll is captivating—while we approach the finish line of 2024, I can’t envision anything more delightful than spending a few hours discovering a lush, tropical paradise.

When you dive in with that mindset, understanding that Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island is a straightforward, leisurely game that gently unfolds over approximately ten hours, I find it hard to claim there’s much to be upset about. You play as Alex, a young girl stranded on a paradise island inhabited by a group of Greek gods suffering from collective amnesia and social conflicts. Your mission is to stroll around and nurture these relationships by searching the island for lost tokens to help your newfound companions remember who they are and why they cherished one another in the first place.

The gods, reimagined in unique personas that may delight or annoy, are initially reserved but begin to warm up as you converse and complete tasks for them, as well as uncover clues about their lives prior to your arrival. Each potential ally is unlocked in exactly the same manner (chat, do favors, find mementos, chat more, do more favors, find more mementos), which means that from as early as thirty minutes in, you’re pretty much done—Mythwrecked might not have any additional surprises left for you.

And I get it. Perhaps this is exactly what you are looking for. Maybe you are a bit fatigued from the triple-A grind and seeking a game that is gentle and predictable just like this. Perhaps you enjoy the back-and-forth of gathering quests and treasure hunts across the petite Ambrosia. All of this resonates with me as well, but ultimately, there’s a fine line between predictable and dull, and Mythwrecked regrettably falls squarely on the wrong side for me.

As far as it goes, the landscape of Ambrosia is rather forgettable. You are either trudging through the sand or stepping on bland grey stones, and although each god has their distinct style and characteristics reflected in their immediate surroundings, the environment surrounding them embodies little of it. This results in no beach feeling particularly different from another, and no part of the fortress appears unique either. Your journey from point A to B will inevitably be interrupted by a Greek pot that, much to my annoyance, cannot be broken, or be completely blocked by an oddly placed barrel or a dead-end. For a realm of gods, it’s surprisingly mundane, challenging to navigate, and… well, plain.

However, there is a fast-travel system, sort of. While you cannot immediately zip between locations at will, there are nine magical doors scattered across the island that will consistently transport you back to the shrine close to your home—an ingenious trick that Polygon Treehouse’s debut game Roki executed brilliantly in a point-and-click puzzle context. That said, your home itself serves little purpose, and I soon stopped paying it any mind once I realized I could do nothing there but sleep. Nonetheless, I do appreciate the reintroduction of these magic doors, especially when I’m in search of a god or need to complete a favor at a specific time.

That’s right—there is a dynamic day/night cycle. Some gods are only available to converse at certain times, and some favors can only be completed during specific windows as well. Unlike Animal Crossing, however, you do not have to leave the game and return (or sneakily change the time on your device). Scattered around the island are about a gazillion benches where you can sit and manipulate the time to whatever you desire… which somewhat renders the entire cyclical element trivial.

This is the reality of the situation. While I enjoy these quality of life enhancements, they render many of Mythwrecked’s mechanics unnecessary. You can also collect Ambrosia fruit, but just like the day/night cycle that can be manipulated at almost any moment… well, there’s hardly any challenge to it. At first, the fruit grows everywhere; all the grasping gods need to do is step outside and pluck one, for goodness’ sake. Then again, the story requires you to gather it and use it to trade with the gods for various items ranging from keys to cassette tapes to plots of land where you can cultivate even more Ambrosia fruit. This could have been an intriguing twist, but there’s so much of the stuff (look at the map image below—all those yellow dots represent fruit I’ve yet to gather!) I bought every item I could the moment they unlocked, and still didn’t run out. Ultimately, I finished the game with over 350 of the darn things left over.

Collecting tokens and fulfilling requests is remarkably straightforward, too. There may be quite a bit of back-and-forth involved – this isn’t a game that values your time – and I found the piecemeal way the tasks were assigned somewhat frustrating towards the end, as you could easily complete a set of tasks in one location only to be sent back there five minutes later for something else. Figuring out which hidden token belongs to which character is clever, though – I never approached the Oracle for help; uncovering the answers on my own felt far more fulfilling, especially when Alex is searching for multiple deities at once. Following the proximity signals provided a fun mini-puzzle experience, too – I never tired of that satisfying beep as you got closer to your goal.

However, the further you progress, the less engaging it all becomes. While Mythwrecked boasts a diverse cast, its world feels rather uniform, with little to make each location feel unique or worth exploring. The fixed camera that you are unable to control often gets in the way, sometimes leading to unavoidable mistakes when you enter and exit shrine entrances. There are small ledges that Alex cannot (meaning: may not) climb. Interactions with the gods are quaint at best and awkward at worst, and even if you completely suspend disbelief, the relationships Alex builds with each god come off as forced and overly sweet rather than genuine, largely due to each character’s exaggerated vocal tones. There is always a trickle of excitement as you collect enough seals to unlock a new area, but even that can end up being unsatisfying; the puzzles you solve to open the doors are uninspired to the point of being insulting.

There are so many small adjustments here and there that could have enhanced the experience. The mosaics we design for Aphrodite – what if they were all different?