Introduction
Mr. Prepper is a survival simulator for the Nintendo Switch. Ultimate Games developed and published this game. You can purchase Mr. Prepper on the Nintendo eShop. I would like to thank Ultimate Games for the review code.
Overview
The country just went through a plague. Then they changed governments. Now a nuclear attack is imminent. Your character Bob, or “Mr. Prepper” as he refers to himself, wants to prepare for what might come. The problem is the government is very authoritarian, and have their eye on you. The inspectors do periodic inspections on your home. The frequency of these inspections depends on how well each of them go.
Gameplay
The purpose of the game is to build a shelter. Then you must craft various items so you can build a space to grow food. Then you must plant various food sources, and many other things as the game progresses. You have to do all of this while keeping up appearances for the government inspector.
The other key task you must do is to keep up your health and stamina filled up as much as possible as they will affect the other gauge you need to monitor. That gauge is your preparedness gauge. Keeping your preparedness gauge high requires that you keep your health and stamina gauges at least half full. You will faint if any of your gauges run out. Fainting will waste time, and may even prevent you from gathering needed resources.
Now you are trying to build a shelter and eventually find another way out. You are not alone. There are people willing to trade goods with you, to help your efforts.
Originally I started a game on normal, and followed the tutorial. It didn’t take long for me to mess up my playthrough. I decided to restart my playthrough on easy. The other thing that I did was to skip the tutorial. In some ways the tutorial messed me up. It blocked me from doing certain actions that would have kept my gauges higher. That provided me with a much more fun and productive experience.
Graphics
The game looks good on the Switch. The graphics in general are pretty good, with one exception and that is that the characters look more like plastic action figures moving by stop motion. Thankfully the character’s motion isn’t terribly important since your character’s appearance doesn’t really affect the actions you perform.
Controls
I imagine Mr. Prepper works much better on a keyboard and mouse. Despite that, you will figure out the controls very quickly. This game would be so much better with a mouse. The primary actions you have to perform are pressing ‘A’ or pressing ‘ZR’. These simulate the left and right mouse clicks respectively. You also have to use ZL and ZR to move between different parts of the menu when you are planting seeds, repairing items, or doing pretty much anything else in the game.
Sound
The sound in Mr. Prepper is mostly atmospheric. This works because most of the time you are busy moving around completing tasks, and collecting resources. You will notice subtle changes when certain things happen, like an inspection, or a battle.
Value
You can buy Mr. Prepper on the Nintendo eShop for $15.49. The game has an excellent length for that cost. After putting in about 10 hours, I have just gotten the first phase of my escape plan complete. Judging from the mine levels, I have lots of places I can gather resources and explore.
Conclusion
Mr. Prepper is a fun and addicting game, once you get the hang of the basic mechanisms of the game. I can attest that time will fly by as you are gathering resources, and crafting different items for your shelter, and ultimately your escape. If you played Fallout Shelter, and are looking to this game, I would say that this game is focusing on managing one person instead of an entire shelter of different people. Also while a nuclear attack is likely, it hasn’t happened yet. If you like games where you have to gather material and craft items to complete game objectives, and maybe like post-apocalyptic settings, then you should definitely give this game a try. You can purchase Mr. Prepper on the Nintendo eShop. I would like to thank Ultimate Games for the review code.
