Akimi Village, a city-building simulator by NinjaBee and Sony Online Entertainment for the PlayStation 3, is one of those rare games where you do not have to worry about reaching a specific goal in order to win. Rather, it is the kind of game that you can play every so often when you want to get away from the competitive, trash talking, win or lose kind of games that dominate the video game industry today. (I’m looking at you, first person shooters.) It is also one of those games where a player can just unwind after a rough day and enjoy playing a fun game without the worry of doing something wrong. Akimi Village has the potential to be a completely worry free game, but slightly misses the mark to be free of frustrations thanks to a couple of design choices that hold back what could have been an excellent title.

The basic premise of this game is simple. You play as either a cute, headband wearing boy or a cute, odd looking, red-haired girl who wakes up in a mysterious island that is covered in shadows, or gloom as the game calls it. The player ends up meeting an old, wise, and witty raccoon that says you have been magically taken from your home to a place called Akimi Island. Eventually, the ancient animal tells you that he can send you back home only if you help the local natives, the Akimi, restore their island to its former glory by purifying the island of the gloom that distresses its people. You purify the island by helping the Akimi rebuild their grand village with a variety of buildings and by planting acorns that shine light back to the shadowy parts of the island. The game’s story is a bit silly, but gets the job done when it comes to giving a story to a city building simulation game.

Your New Minions in Akimi Village

Gameplay consists of collecting resources, such as wood and stone, building new structures, developing a culturally rich town, and purifying parts of the island covered in the misery inducing gloom while saving the vegetable looking Akimi that are miserable from the surrounding shadows covering the island. You start off with a workshop and a couple of Akimi natives and begin to purify the island from the gloom’s grasp by constructing buildings and earning culture points for your town. Once a player builds a specific amount of buildings and gets a specific amount of culture points, the player is awarded with light emitting acorns that are planted in spirit wells found throughout the island that fights back the gloom and restores a portion of the island, revealing new rewards and more Akimi natives that you can use to harvest resources or to do your bidding. You can also unlock blueprints that allow the player to build more kinds of buildings to construct throughout the island.

The first hours of the game are fun but eventually become repetitive and tedious the longer you play. All you do throughout the whole game is build new structures for your up and coming village, unlock new buildings to make, slowly purify parts of the island, and collect resources and clean the island from debris to further purify the island. The same concept is repeated throughout the game and does little to mix things up the more you play the game. This is not the kind of game that you can play for hours upon hours without getting bored. Instead, I caught myself playing the game for about an hour and returning back to Akimi Village after I played other games on my system.

Although I appreciate the cute, age friendly art style the developers were going for in Akimi Village, the graphics are nowhere near special in this game. The game has a similar look to Nintendo’s Animal Crossing on the GameCube and uses graphics that could have easily been found on a PlayStation 2. Sometimes I felt that I was playing a game from the last generation of consoles, or even from the days of the Nintendo 64 or the original PlayStation rather than a game on Sony’s powerful console. Even if the game does not look as great as other games found on the PlayStation Network, Akimi Village does have its unique little charm with its cutesy graphics and colorful character models. The little Akimi natives, although lacking detail, do look rather adorable and charming.

It's fun kicking these little dudes around.

Seeing as Akimi Village strives to be a relaxing experience, it comes with no surprise that the game also includes comforting tunes. The music in the game, although not so memorable, gets the job done absorbing the player in the peaceful environment of Akimi Island. Akimi villagers speak in gibberish tongues similar to that found in Rare’s Banjo-Kazooie and speak no kind of English whatsoever. Although it may sound like the Akimi’s gibberish can get annoying, it actually made the little critters gain extra points in the cuteness department. I can easily see female gamers enjoying the little quirks and bubbles of the Akimi natives.

If there is one thing that ruined Akimi Village’s chances of being a complete frustration-free game, it’s the lack of guidance and information given to the player the farther you get into the game. I found myself getting frustrated not knowing what a bunch of icons displayed on screen meant, especially when figuring out what resources I needed in order to create specific components to finish constructing my buildings. I could not find any information about the meanings of the icons displayed on screen and felt lost at times when I could not figure out what other parts I needed in order to complete a structure. It would have been nice if the developers added a screen or menu that would have explained to me what the various icons found throughout the game meant. Instead, I found myself looking at each building, trying to figure out what kinds of materials each structure produced until I found the one I needed.

Gotta save em all!

The game also does not do a good job explaining the benefits of upgrading buildings constructed throughout the island. Apart from an upgraded cosmetic look, I could not tell what other new benefits upgraded buildings received and began to lose interest improving often used structures. What’s the point in upgrading buildings if they do not clearly do anything new apart from changing its appearance? It’s a shame that the upgrading system is not fully explained to the player, as it would have added another layer of depth to the game.

In the end, Akimi Village succeeds in some ways to become the relaxing, stress-free type of game it is hoping to be. The game is fun to play in small doses but can be somewhat of a chore to play for hours on end. Although the game has its fair share of presentation issues, they are not nearly enough to ruin the overall enjoyment and fun factor of the game. The game may also look too cutesy for some players and may bore some of the hardcore gamers out there but for those that are looking for the most bang for their buck, NinjaBee’s sim does not disappoint. If you are looking for a break from other modern day games found on the market and want to try something fresh and new, make sure to give Akimi Village a good look.

Final Verdict:  8/10