Merge Items, Make Friends, Rebuild the Town!
A casual merge-two mobile game by Extra Dimension Games Inc. where players take on the task of revitalizing an idyllic seaside town by clearing away a mysterious pollution and rescuing the cutesy animal inhabitants.
Stepping into the shoes of Fox, players arrive at Critter Coast expecting to find a little slice of paradise — but instead they find a great big mess! Critter Coast has been overrun by the sudden appearance of a strange corruption that's trapped residents in thorny thickets and sludgy puddles, coated the town in gunk, and choked the life out of the beautiful landscape. Determined to help, Fox sets about gathering supplies to rescue the townsfolk and clear away the mysterious blight.
Gameplay revolves around harvesting low-level natural resources and collecting basic tools in order to merge like items. Combining two of the same item produces an item one level higher: merging two Level 1 flowers makes one Level 2 flower, combining two Level 4 tools produces one Level 5 tool. It's these higher level items that are needed to complete tasks to clean the pollution, free the residents of Critter Coast, and rebuild the town. Fox will need to explore nearby islands and work to unlock crafting recipes with the help of their new friends.
Tropes in Critter Coast:
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Tropes in Multiple Version
- Adaptation Name Change: "Dolores" the Deer was named "Daphne" in previous versions of the game.
- Alliterative Name: All the animals in Critter Coast (except for Fox) have names that start with the same letter as their species:
- Oki the Otter
- Barry the Badger
- Summer and Suvi the Squirrels
- Lena the Lizard
- Dolores the Deer
- Boris the Bear
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Suvi the Squirrel is a pale lavender color, while the other animal inhabitants of Critter Coast have more realistic fur and scale colors.
- An Interior Designer Is You: Early 2023 updates have introduced the ability to customize and decorate the interior of the player's home. Two rooms and basic furniture are available for all players, with a catalog of expanded designs available for purchase.
- Baby Talk: The Sprite found near the Elder Tree talks in simple, baby-ish phrases like "Hungy" and "Wants camby." The "Elder Seed" that accompanies them speaks more eloquently.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Toolboxes and the tools they produce are color coded:
- Cleaning supplies (rags, sponges, buckets, soap, and vacuum cleaners) are all yellow and green.
- Cutting tools (knives, saws, axes, and chainsaws) are red and pink.
- Stone-working tools (crowbars, chisels, hammers, and jackhammers) are blue.
- Color-Coded Stones:
- Played Straight: The Resin "Shrine Tile" items produced in Shrine-cleaning puzzles is a deep orange, growing paler with each merge until it becomes golden-yellow Amber.
- Downplayed: Other "Seed Items" in the Shrine puzzles are minerals that range from dark blue to bright pink. The type of stone changes based on the level, like dark blue "Graphite," purple "Medium Graphite" and "Large Graphite", light purple "Blended Crystal", magenta "Small Rose Crystal", red "Medium Rose Crystal", and bright pink "Large Rose Crystal."
- Crescent Moon Island: One of the islands players will need to visit and purify is "Moon Bay," which is shaped like a crescent moon.
- Cunning Like a Fox: Downplayed — the protagonist is a fox, but "crafty" and "cunning" in the sense that they're the one who must be clever enough to clean up the pollution and save the townsfolk. The mischievous trickery normally associated with foxes is largely absent.
- A Dog Named "Dog": The player character is a fox named Fox.
- Equipment Upgrade: Merging small toolboxes and chests results in "medium" and "large" version of those items. Upgraded toolboxes will occasionally produce higher-level tools when tapped, while upgraded chests will provide better rewards (i.e. more gold, diamonds, and stamina) when opened.
- Freemium Timer:
- Gathering resources or collecting tools from a toolbox costs one unit of "Energy" per interaction. The Energy meter caps out at 100, and regenerates at a rate of one unit every two minutes (or players can use the Premium Currency to refill their Energy meter immediately).
- Tools and resources can be gathered from specific points around the town and islands, but an individual point only produces a certain amount of resources before it needs time to recharge. Players have the option to pay Premium Currency to recharge the resource instantly.
- Grid Inventory: The backpack inventory is a 7x9 grid where players automatically deposit collected resources, crafted items, and rewards. Each item fills a single space of the inventory, allowing players to hold a maximum of 63 items (discounting the additional storage space that can be purchased with gold once players build a home). Overlaps with Inventory Management Puzzle in that players start the game with the majority of the grid locked up in the same corruption that's afflicted the town, greatly reducing the amount of space available for collected resources.
- Game Hunting Mechanic: Downplayed — Once the town has been cleaned up a little, monarch butterflies can be seen flitting around. Crafting a butterfly net at the blacksmith's and carrying it in the inventory allows players to catch those butterflies. Much the same as the other natural resources, players can merge the butterflies in their inventory to get a higher level butterfly. These butterflies are only needed for a single task, but it requires players to catch 256 butterflies and merge them into a Level 9 "Gold Drop" butterfly to complete.
- Inventory Management Puzzle: Downplayed — Players start the game with a backpack Grid Inventory that's largely clogged up with the same pollution plaguing the town. Items stuck in the pollution are inaccessible until a combo is made next to them, and even after that they remain locked in place until merged with an identical item. This limits the amount of available slots in the inventory for materials gathered and toolboxes until players open up all the polluted inventory slots.
- Item Crafting: Rebuilding the townsfolk's businesses and recovering "recipes" from the island shrines allows players to craft basic items. These crafted items can be sold to the Trading Post to obtain maps that unlock new islands:
- Summer's garden shop can craft bouquets, pomanders, and garden features.
- Lena's blacksmith makes sickles, barrels, magnifying lenses and butterfly catching nets.
- Boris' bakery produces candy and baked goods.
- Daphne's atelier makes dresses, pants, and scarves.
- Premium Currency: The game has two currencies: gold and gems. While both can be used to purchase items in the General Store, only gems can buy additional energy or instantly replenish exhausted resources. Players can sell off excess materials for gold, but gems can only be attained by leveling up, completing achievements, or clearing shrines.
- Russian Bear: Boris the baker. He's an anthropomorphic bear with all his dialogue rendered in a thick Russian accent.
- Sugar Bowl: Once the mysterious pollution is cleared away, the land of Critter Coast is a beautiful coastal town filled with cute, friendly animals. Butterflies and blooming flowers are everywhere and there's an inexhaustible supply of natural resources ranging from iron and lumber to wheat and honey.
- Technicolor Toxin: The corruption is depicted as a purple filter over the landscape. Little motes of purple gasses simmer near the edges, purple-tinted thorn bushes wind through the trees, and purple slime coats the ground.
- Wise Tree: The large, brightly color Elder Tree near the Trading Post is sapient and capable of speech. It gives Fox the mission of cleaning up the shrines scattered on small islands near Critter Coast.
- World of Funny Animals: The inhabitants of Critter Coast are all cute little animals that walk on two legs, wear clothes, and have jobs.
Tropes Exclusive to Older Versions
- Backtracking: Inverted — In previous versions of the game, players could only explore the islands while clearing away the pollution on them. After completing all the tasks on an island, clearing the island's shrine, and collecting all rewards, players were unable to return. Newer versions allow players to return to previously explored islands and collect resources.
- A Dog Named "Dog":
- Played Straight with characters like Otter, Squirrel, Bunny, and Fox, who are named after their species. (Otter gets the proper name "Oki" in later versions, and Squirrel is dubbed "Summer.")
- Averted with Boris the Bear, Lena the Lizard, and Daphne the Deer. Their dialogue boxes listed their species even though they introduce themselves by name to Fox.
