Preserve Review (PC)

To abide by the rules of preservation, one must first learn to respect the natural flora of their homeland—the wisps of the earth and the inhabitants that live there, peacefully grazing, thriving, and monopolizing without the threat of succumbing to the outer world and its economic pitfalls. Such is the case in Bitmap Galaxy’s latest honeycomb-centric, harmonious world-building sandbox, Preserve—a game that, in spite of its natural tendency to spin a perplexing yarn, bears the moral of a simple story: preservation is of utmost importance to humanity, as is the need to retain order in the communal realm to prevent outside forces from obliterating the environment and its each and every organic element.

At the heart of Preserve is a beautiful concept that allows its users to tread deep into the core of a natural landscape and create everlasting wonders with a vast open network of honeycomb biomes and tools. With no combat to endure or earthly disasters to overcome, the game sees you taking on the sole responsibility of stacking layers atop one another to create swathes of economically sustainable land for the local wildlife and flora. Of course, there’s a little more to it than that, but before we slip into the details, allow us to rewind the clock and lather a bit of additional context over the matter. Care to join us as we plunge into the depths of Preserve? Then let’s press on.

A World in Bloom

Preserve follows a setup that we’ve seen several times before: you have access to an interconnecting network of honeycomb plots, and the ability to fashion certain pockets of economic growth from the grass roots of each node. The goal of the game, of course, is all rather simple: generate a luscious image of a world that’s both vibrant in color, and not to mention rife with healthy inhabitants and natural resources. To reach such a point, however, requires a lot of hard work and creativity—a trial and error process that mostly consists of finding which square aligns with which natural resource, animal with substrate, and so on and so forth. For example, each allotment on the board has the power to evolve and provide a series of benefits for certain things, whether it’s flora, creatures, or other forms of agriculture. Simply put, it’s your job to enhance the environment.

For the most part, you’ll find that Preserve is a laid-back experience right from the get-go, as it more or less allows you to wax your way through the vast majority of its world without needing to fret over the thought of succumbing to any overarching issues. To say that it’s entirely without any form or risk wouldn’t be entirely true, mind you; in fact, it often presents a healthy substrate of puzzles and other environmental obstacles to shovel through, though, to be fair, a lot of these problems are mostly solved by experimenting with different nodes and other methods of learning over a set amount of time. And that’s probably the best thing about the game, in general: the fact that it allows you to create without limits, and without the constraints of a knuckle-headed sandbox sim that sports all the bells and whistles of a stubbornly relentless UI.

To Evolve and Prosper

As it stands, Preserve has a total of three unique biomes in its ecosystem, with each one providing a collection of original settings, creatures, and scoring systems. What truly sets this one apart from its peers, however, is that, where you would usually choose your assets from a pre-determined catalog, you instead have to sift through a selection of cards—decks that each have their own respective cards, perks, and other features for you to utilize around the world. In a simple match-3 fashion, you have the option to stack each of these cards atop one of the many cones on the map—a move that can ultimately transform the old bones of a vacant patch of land into a bustling hub for its inhabitants. The goal of all of this, again, is to use your cards wisely, and to match them with their respective strengths to manifest growth. Simple.

Preserve isn’t the harshest of games when it comes to generic world-building sims. As it turns out, even you do happen to make a mistake along the way, the game still offers you the choice to reverse your cards and make amends for your past actions, meaning, if you do fail to connect the dots and generate a healthy climate, there isn’t a whole lot of backtracking to be done to mitigate the damage. And that’s a good thing, really, because I often struggled to figure out a lot of the basic concepts of what I was trying to accomplish during the early portions of the campaign. Well, I say struggled, when really there wasn’t a tremendous amount to stumble upon, to begin with. Nevertheless, the fact that I could still make mistakes and not have to rewind the clock for each error was a blessing in disguise.

Beauty in All Regions

It doesn’t take much to realize how beautiful Preserve actually is, and to be completely honest, it isn’t even the best part about the game, in general. Sure, it looks great from just about any perspective, but the beating heart of its universe most certainly sits within another area—the pocket of its soothing ambiance and all-round colorful cast of creatures and thriving locales. Aside from the gameplay being a little repetitive in areas, the rest of the game is an absolute delight to work with, especially when it comes to pulling back the layers and unlocking the cards for your biomes. Sure enough, the word ‘cozy’ springs to mind here — and that almost pains me to say, given the fact that the word is tossed around a lot these days with little to no context provided. But, that’s exactly what Preserve is: cozy, collected, and utterly beautiful.

Of course, there’s still plenty of room for a little extra improvement here, too. For example, Preserve could benefit greatly by adding more maps to the cauldron, or even throwing in a few more game modes to keep the hours ticking over, perhaps. However, for what it is—a simple world-building game with an avid heart of gold—it’s certainly ticking all of the right boxes in my book. It helps, too, that the game isn’t currently suffering from any tedious bugs or technical issues; on the contrary, it performs surprisingly well, and it does its job of gelling each of its components together in an elegant manner, too. Could it do with a bit of extra fine-tuning? Perhaps, though I’m not exactly about to slate its copious amounts of great qualities in favor of a slightly less important half-baked one.

Verdict

Preserve generates a clean-looking palette of colors and prolific building elements that, when combined with the minimalistic design and cozy aesthetics of a modern-day utopian landscape, create an excellent balance of light and natural beauty. As I mentioned earlier, too, it isn’t the most difficult card-centric puzzle game on the block, either, which means a lot of fun can be found from within the inner sanctum of its world right from the moment you step foot into its grassy terrain. Don’t get me wrong, there is a bit of a learning curve to the entire process, but the fact that even the most perplexing puzzles can be all the more accessible due to a clean UI and a bit of hand-holding makes the overall experience far more relaxing and enjoyable to watch unfold, nonetheless.

The bottom line here is simple: if you enjoy—adore, even—the cozy atmosphere of a harmless world that sports more natural fauna than catastrophic events and the likes, then you’re probably going to enjoy shuffling through the cards and finding new ways to unlock the positive aspects of Preserve and its casket of tropical wonders. As for whether or not you’ll find enough energy to scrape the barrel entirely clean and rid it of all its contents, though, is another question. I’m not saying that there’s a surplus of content, though given the fact that you can more or less see a lot of what the game has to offer in just a few short hours, it’s likely that you’ll fall short of momentum somewhere down the line. Swings and roundabouts, I suppose.