Summer is the best month, if “best” includes scorching weather and lots of bugs. School is out, though, and the days are long, providing amazing opportunities for some wonderful days driving a kid’s parents up a wall until they get shipped off to summer camp. While the goal of summer camp may be blessed, sweet relief for the parents, they still want the kids to have fun, and that means choosing a nice place with a good reputation. If that isn’t available, there’s always Camp Canyonwood.
Camp Canyonwood’s reputation isn’t quite through the floor but it’s getting there, and as the new counselor it’s your job to actually care about the place enough to make it a bit nicer every year. The place is run down, trash lying on the ground, small tents and only a handful of activities, but a good counselor knows that every broken thing is a potential activity. Activities lead to badges, and badges lead to happy campers who might pay a little bit more to come back next year. It’s the circle of camp life, with each year seeing new batch of kids to give a little better vacation to than the previous ones.
The campers arrive every summer in a batch of four, each with their own likes and dislikes to go with their personality. As head (and only) counselor-bird it’s your job to guide them, and fortunately the pause screen gives a nice rundown of their known preferences so you can tailor the day’s activities around them. If one kid likes fishing it’s worth spending some cash on an extra pole, because not only does it make them happy, but the results of their playing keeps the campers fed. One kid might like cutting down trees, which isn’t as bad as it sounds because wood is always useful to upgrade the camp stores, while another’s dinosaur obsession means they get a shovel to dig up the X spots found in the woods and uncover other handy resources. The kids learn both by watching you perform the activity as well as by getting to do it themselves, but your skills are as run down as the camp at the start.
Just like the campers, though, you learn by doing, but unlike the campers there’s a distinguished jackalope who visits your dreams every night with cryptic advice plus the offer to trade a few skill points for more inventory space. A good counselor wants to carry all the tools of the trade at all times, from fishing poles to pickaxes to the bugle used to rally the kids when they’re off having free time. This doesn’t, however, leave a lot of room to carry the various bugs, flowers, foraged berries, bits of trash and other random items that show up all over the campground. It can be a lot to manage and the storage locker isn’t always convenient, so it makes as much sense as anything else to trade hard-earned skills for better carrying capacity. As the night’s dreams hint at there’s something off in the campground, but finding the occasional skeleton or flying saucer is just part of summer camp, right?
As the days roll on summer comes to an end all too soon, although with each “year” being five days total they don’t have a chance to drag on. The end of summer sees the campers go home filled with memories of their time away from home, whether that be good, bad or indifferent. A bad experience like getting in a fight with another camper or running terrified from a bear can be counterbalanced with a preferred activity, and that’s frequently enough to make the day a positive one overall. When it’s time to go home the kids rank the camp based on how much they enjoyed their time there and that translates to the next year’s budget, used for buying new tools, camp amenities or decorations. Every year is its own new adventure, and if the traditional activities are supplemented by strange hauntings then it makes the year more memorable.
Being a camp counselor is a great base to build up from but Camp Canyonwood is in Early Access for a reason. The quirky art style and great dialogue give it a solid personality, but expanding the content needs to be supplemented by plenty of bug-fixes, such as camper trait descriptions that fit in the text boxes or context-sensitive actions (cut down tree, mine rock, etc.) getting overridden by kids constantly getting between you and the thing you’re trying to do. It’s easy to forgive, though, because the tone and setting are a huge amount of fun, and it doesn’t take long at all to sink into Camp Canyonwood’s gameplay loop. Everywhere in the campground is an activity, and activities are just what the kids need to keep them busy and earn new badges. There’s an endless string of summers ahead for a busy camp counselor and each new season is a chance to make a better year than the one before.
