Family Tree Review

Become a sentient piece of fruit and try to find your lost kids!

• Developer: Infinite State Games
• Publisher: eastasiasoft
• Release date: 10th October 2019
• Genre: Action, Arcade, Party, Puzzle
• Platforms: Nintendo Switch
• Reviewed on: Nintendo Switch
• Game Supplied by: Publisher

With its adorably cute and colourful visuals and the joyful tinkle of the music featured throughout, Family Tree is a 2D platformer that is suited to everyone and anyone. Following Family Tree’s arrival exclusive to the Nintendo Switch, we reviewed it to see if it was more of a close sibling or a distant relative.

The game starts off showing you a cutscene in which Mr and Mrs Fruit are looking after their adorable blob children. When going inside for the night, the children are sucked into a black hole by The Evil Skull (called Pedro, I have no idea why) and spread all across the forest. It’s now up to you, Mr Fruit to go out and save your children by climbing to the top of every tree. The cutscene itself is the only storyline that you will get in this game, so don’t expect a lot of narrative and lore. The game isn’t meant to be story-driven, but rather, more of a light-hearted “play when you want” kind of scenario.

There are over 100 different levels which are mainly played as vertical platformers. Your main goal is to get to the top of the tree whilst collecting as many offspring as you can. Your offspring come in the form of tiny fruits that easily mesh into the background colours and can be missed through no fault of your own. As the colour palette for the platforms is the same all around it’s not surprising that I got to the top of the tree having missed five or six of my poor children. The other levels consist of you running away from Pedro (again, don’t ask) as he tries to engulf you in darkness. Whilst running away from Pedro it appears that the seasons are changing, as you’re told to “Beat Pedro to Summer” or whatever season comes next, all the while with the levels becoming more and more difficult as you progress throughout the game.

Although a 2D platformer at its core, this game also mixes in an interesting control style, almost pinball-esque. Your character’s main trait is the ability to jump from platform to platform, getting higher in the tree as he jumps. How far you jump and where you land is shown with a handy arrow (although that didn’t help me much, as my sense of direction sucks). Whilst flying through the air you can also move left and right by using the bumper buttons, which gives you the ability to pick up more fruit on your way up and down. The best part is bouncing off walls and objects, allowing you to go full pelt at something and just see where you end up! This is aided by the appearance of cannons which you can jump into and blast yourself into either a predetermined direction or a direction of your choosing,  depending on the type of cannon. The further into the game your progress the more elements are added into the levels, such as enemies, crates and special bounce pads.

Family Tree is driven by how high a score you can gather in the levels. For every fruit you collect and enemy you destroy you gain points in the level. There’s also the added pressure of a timer that counts down towards Pedro appearing and sucking away all your points and making you restart the level. Also, the quicker you complete the level the more bonus points you gather, so hop to it! To make matters worse, each time you’re damaged by enemies, your timer decreases further, bring Pedro closer to you, so do indeed hop to it, but hop carefully!

Over the course of the game, a counter is kept that lets you see how many kids you’ve saved. For each milestone of “kids saved” Mr Fruit unlocks new abilities for you to use. These can range from the ability to slow down enemies to making your jump span a longer distance. It’s great to feel rewarded for each milestone, particularly given the lack of storyline.

Family Tree doesn’t just offer a single-player mode either! If you have enough controllers (and enough friends) you can get together for a bit of four-player local co-op. This gives a great bit of variety to a game that can at times seem a bit repetitive. Also, if you’re looking for a bit more of a challenge you can enter “Endless Climb” mode, where you can race your friends and prove yourself to be the top banana.

The controls are rather sensitive and can get quite frustrating when trying to angle your jumps just right. There were multiple times when I thought I had angled my jump just perfectly for Mr Fruit, only to then go bounding off into the unknown because I moved my thumb half a millimetre to the right. It wouldn’t frustrate the casual player, but for players who are used to their controls being “just so”, it will get a little annoying.

Visuals wise, the design is a delightful barrage of colour and cuteness. If the very hungry caterpillar had mistakenly devoured a magic mushroom in his pursuit of sustenance, I’m pretty sure this would be the fever dream. It’s a cuteness overload filled with colour and easy to listen to music. One criticism is that the level design does get very repetitive over the course of over 100 levels. Sure, the seasons change and the trees get a little bit bigger each time, but other than that there’s nothing different about the first level of summer versus the last level of winter. 

The sound design in this game is very repetitive. The little “yippee” sounds that Mr Fruit makes when he jumps can get very frustrating. However, the one redeeming sound design in this game is the opening credit music. Never did I think that cute twinkly music and English style rap would go together. But it made me smile so I guess it works!

Family Tree is a cute and easily playable game for all abilities. Yes, it could do with a tweak or two here and there to make it a bit better. The gameplay and levels are a bit repetitive and do get a bit boring. The controls could do with a little loosening, and the sounds can get repetitive. However, what I have found is that I quite happily blasted through the levels and enjoyed each one. The visuals and music are fitting for the vibe that it wants to give off and it seems like the type of game I would be happy to let my (non-existent) kids play for hours to keep them quiet.

Summary

Family Tree is a cute and easily playable game for all abilities. Yes, it could do with a tweak or two here and there to make it a bit better. The gameplay and levels are a bit repetitive and do get a bit boring. The controls could do with a little loosening, and the sounds can get repetitive. However, what I have found is that I quite happily blasted through the levels and enjoyed each one. The visuals and music are fitting for the vibe that it wants to give off and it seems like the type of game I would be happy to let my (non-existent) kids play for hours to keep them quiet.