Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island Review
Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island is the sophomore game from Polygon Treehouse, who we first encountered back in 2020 with their debut game Röki. Mythwrecked retains the soft art style and the Metroidvania-esque exploration of Röki, including the glowing blue fast travel portals from that game, while presenting a completely different story and a distinct lack of puzzle solving.
The game stars London-based PhD student Alex as she vacations in Greece, only to encounter a terrible storm at sea and end up shipwrecked (myth… wrecked…) on a mysterious island (Ambrosia… Island…). Stuck there, she encounters the pantheon of prominent Greek gods – updated to look quite modern – only to find that they have lost their memories and have grown disconnected and mistrustful.
Armed with nothing but her handy-dandy “Ambrosidex”, a smartphone for the gods, if you will – and a bag that stores endless amounts of ambrosia fruit, Alex must complete favors for the gods and discover their lost mementos to help jog their memories.
It sounds simple enough, but… it stays simple enough, and that’s exactly the problem. Mythwrecked seems so desperate to sit in its ‘cozy game’ space, that it divests itself of all challenge.
Alex runs around the island over and over, cleaning up icons on the map by pressing a single button whenever she encounters the object that needs to be interacted with – be it a bird that needs feeding for Hermes, a mosaic that needs cleaning for Aphrodite, or a wind turbine that needs fixing for Hephaestus. Alongside this, you’ll be armed with a hot-and-cold radar to help find the gods’ missing mementos, which is a matter of simply following the pings until you get close enough to the location, before the game reveals the memento.
Do these tasks enough times, and the gods will remember a bit of who they are and what caused them to lose their memories and isolate themselves. Your friendship level gets ‘upgraded’ one level, and then you’re back to the grind, cleaning up map icons and chasing radar pings, until you get to level 3 for each god.
I was bored senseless of this gameplay loop in the tutorial segment alone, but I stayed optimistic knowing that this game comes from the creators of Röki. My optimism was dashed on the rocks as I discovered over time that the game really does expect me to recursively run around performing mundane tasks for several hours.
Mythwrecked doesn’t demand anything but busywork from the player. It doesn’t test your reflexes, your creativity, or your puzzle-solving ability. If you’re hoping the storytelling makes up for it – it doesn’t. The drip-fed storytelling left me exasperated more often than not, and the game’s themes of community and collaboration rang hollow when you consider that ninety-nine percent of the work in connecting the gods was done by a mortal with apparently really strong legs.
It’s difficult to recommend Mythwrecked even to enthusiasts of cozy, struggle-free games. Despite the competent production values, smooth user experience, and creative takes on Greek mythology, Mythwrecked only requires you to employ the most mundane part of the game-playing brain. In a market saturated with more engaging and entertaining indies, you can surely do better than this one.
Developer: Polygon Treehouse
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Publisher: Whitethorn Games
Release Date: December 5, 2024 (PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch)
This review is based on a copy of the game provided by the publisher. The PC version of the game was played for this review of Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island.
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