Island Saver is a Edutainment Advertisement Game commissioned by Britain's National Westminster Bank (NatWest), developed by Scottish studio Stormcloud Games and published by NatWest. In this action-adventure title, the player takes on the role of the Bionaut, who is sent to clean up a idyllic island cluster called the Savvy Islands after they have been heavily polluted with trash and sickly purple goo. Guided by Kiwi the talking parrot and armed with a suction gun called the Trash Blaster, the Bionaut restores the islands to their former glory while saving the bankimals, animals who function for all intents and purposes as living piggy banks, and fighting off blob-like creatures called Litterbugs, which try to steal the player's money and spread goo all over the island. While playing the game the player learns basic financial literacy, by actions such as storing money in a dedicated banking machine, paying off loans used to unlock new areas or buy important items and using special tax tokens to help carry out essential services like recycling and construction.
The game released on May 13, 2021 and is currently available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC as a free download. Two DLC content packs, Dinosaur Island and Fantasy Island are available as paid add-ons and introduce new areas, characters and bankimals.
This game contains examples of the following tropes:
- 100% Completion:
- Kiwi's Nest Eggs on the Savvy Islands, the Golden Goose's Golden Eggs on Fantasy Island and Newton's fossils on Dinosaur Island. The more you collect out of the twenty on each island, the higher your final ranking for that island will be.
- There are also badges you can collect after achieving certain goals.
- Abnormal Ammo: Though this isn't a true example as it's from a non-violent game, the Trash Blaster can fire anything it picks up. It's most often used for firing trash into recycling machines and water at Grow Plots to grow fruit or to kill Litterbugs.
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Bankimals are certainly more colourful than their Real Life counterparts. Purple wolves, anyone?
- Balloon Belly: When it has eaten enough fruit a bankimal expands to hilariously spherical proportions after filling up with coins that the player needs to retrieve.
- Canon Immigrant: Pigby, Newton and Truffles originally came from a previous children's savings scheme NatWest did called Pigby and Friends
. Here Pigby and Truffles run stalls in which you can exchange fruits and seeds for doubloons while Newton rewards the player with dinosaur saddles for repaying his debt. Pigby also runs the online shop the player buys items from. - Cardiovascular Love: Bankimals that grow particularly fond of you will emanate little pink hearts as they run up to you.
- Catching Some Z's:
- Sleeping bankimals do this.
- The bank machine does this on its display screen when it is inactive.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Fall into a body of water or lava or fall off one of the floating islands of Fantasy Island? No worries, you just go back to where you where when you fell!
- Deliberately Monochrome: Bankimals are presented this way at first as it's explicitly stated that the pollution on the islands has stripped them of their colour. They regain their colour once they are healed.
- Dung Fu:
- There is an achievement called "Who Threw Poo?" that is awarded for firing poop at a Litterbug.
- Bankimal monkeys throw their poop just like in real life.
- Equipment Upgrade: Pigby sells upgrades to the Trash Blaster in his shop.
- Expy: Rainbow Cat is this to the Cheshire Cat.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: An odd example with Fantasy Island as it does contain creatures from real-world mythology such as griffins and manticores but also fictional creatures like the Funny Flamingo and House Snail. However, the Mythic Wolf's Bankipedia does explicitly confirm it was inspired by Cerberus.
- Fictional Currency: Doubloons, the main currency of the Savvy Islands and the only currency on the DLC islands.
- Furry Confusion: Bankimals are all non-anthropomorphic but there are anthropomorphic animal characters in the game like Bucky the Mule and Pigby.
- Global Currency:
- Downplayed. Though the standard Doubloon currency is needed to buy items, get trash back from recycling machines and for some building projects, there are some bankimals that instead produce real-world currencies (they're more common on the latter two islands). These currencies are taken to a foreign exchange machine to be converted into Doubloons.
- Played straight on Fantasy Island and Dinosaur Island as foreign currency has been abolished in the DLC.
- Jungle Japes: Certain areas of Sandy Island, such as Croc Beach, Wallow Hole Way and Primate Playground.
- Logo Joke: After the game loads, the first thing you see is NatWest's "three arrowheads" logo Match Cutting to an satellite view of the Savvy Islands, which are coincidentally shaped like three arrowheads.
- Man-Eating Plant: Well, Coin-Eating Plant. Venus Debt Trap acts as a debt collector and will reward the player with Newton's repossessed items if they feed Venus enough doubloons.
- Misplaced Wildlife: You can dismount from a polar bear bankimal in the desert part of Icecap Island. As Apex Bankimals stay in the area they were dismounted in, it can fall into this trope.
- Multiple Head Case: The Mythic Wolf, Funny Flamingo and Mythic Turtle of Fantasy Island each have two heads.
- Naturally Huskless Coconuts: Coconut palm trees have a handful of already dehusked coconuts growing on them.
- Nobody Poops: Loudly and proudly averted by each and every bankimal. In fact you need their poop to make fertiliser, so it's a good thing they poop!
- Our Dragons Are Different: The dragon Apex Bankimal on Fantasy Island is a friendly, cartoony-looking creature that has forearm wings instead of the usual back wings.
- Palette Swap:
- The Golden Eggs share the same sprite as the Nest Eggs, only golden-coloured. Similarly, there are two different kinds of Fishberry in the game that can be distinguished by the tail colour - green tailed berries are for the turtles on Sandy Island and purple-tailed berries are for the Pteranodon on Dinosaur Island.
- This can be done intentionally with bankimals by shooting paintballs purchased from Pigby's store at them.
- Polly Wants a Microphone: Kiwi the parrot offers advice and prompts to the player.
- Practical Currency: You can use fruits to barter with Kiwi for rare seeds needed to attract certain bankimals.
- Product Placement: Well, duh, this is an advergame after all. The bank machines have a small NatWest logo on the top and doubloons also have the logo engraved on them (or is it a depiction of the Savvy Islands?). Even the icon for the money app on your display is the NatWest logo!
- Pun:
- Bucky is a money mule who is also a literal mule, while Chomper is a loan shark who happens to be a shark.
- When entering Icecap Island for the first time, Kiwi remarks "It's so cold here that my assets have frozen".
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Icecap Island's icy half.
- Speaking Simlish: All of the NPCs speak this way.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Every bankimal has one that is needed to produce doubloons and get them back to health.
- Unicorn: One of the two main Apex Bankimals of Fantasy Island.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Litterbugs need to be killed with water. The small ones can be killed instantly while the much larger Mega Bugs need to be shot at multiple times, severely emptying your water tank - often completely if you haven't purchased the water capacity upgrade - as a result.
- Wingding Eyes:
- The bank machine and recycling machines both display heart eyes when the player deposits the respective items in them.
- The recycling machines will also do X-eyes if they are full.
