Littlewood

I loved the peaceful vibe and the exploration. I struggled with how it felt there wasn't much to do for the story. I prefer more narrative-driven games, so it wasn't for me. However, if you prefer a chill vibe, you might like this!

feels unfinished and really grindy. holds a special place in my heart but still really frustrating during later gameplay

Do you like farming sims, but hate feeling pressured by the typical day/night system? Do you enjoy games like Act Raiser or Dark Cloud that want you to place town items in specific places for added bonuses? Well Littlewood is the game for you! Littlewood circumvents the day/night system concept in both town-sim genre, and in real life! You'll look down, look back up, and an arbitrary number of IRL hours will have passed!

Before you start thinking this is just another SDV clone, Littlewood is a bit different. The game isn't so much about farming and building relationships as it is doing tasks through the day in order to grind out levels. Every NPC only has a handful of stock phrases they say, but talking to them each day raises your "level" with them. The tasks are simple and easy to understand, and the game reward you both for figuring out puzzles and being curious and exploring around. Even the mini-card game in it wound up being rewarding once I got the hang of it. The game doesn't have much replay value, and I wish there was simply more content on the whole, but all in all Littlewood was a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

Been playing this game non-stop for a week. I love the whole idea of building the town, collecting the townfolks as if they were pokemons, and them giving you blueprints to expand the town more. However, the game has some serious issues that piss me off: 1. The RNG is disgusting. It took me FIVE YEARS in game to get the rare fish/bugs for the travellers. One particularly infuriating instance - the Chimaeras, after spending years checking the bug tree, I found all 3 at the same time in the town square. There is 0 logic of when, where, what time, what season, or anything like that, to the spawn of fish, bugs, new crops, magical trees, etc. 2. The Edge of Solemn is pretty much nothing. The only reason you have to go there is to get the achievement. Combine this fact with all of the grind needed to get there - all of the items you need to get (with the disgusting RNG not helping at all), selling them to the travellers, checking the forest and cavern for the other travellers. I'm sorry but how does 5+6+4+99+5349+54389 equal 0. Absolutely zero payoff for all that grind. 3. You know what else has zero payoff? The Museum. My face when I completed the first room, walked out, expecting a message, a reward, a nudge to check tomorrow for something, a gift from Laura, a... whatever, ANYTHING. No. The museum gets a golden thingy in the hall to symbolise which room is completed. Groundbreaking. And the townfolks keep rubbing it in my face "oooh you've done so much for the museum" yeah and you didn't, where is my reward ffs. 4. The story is left in the dust. There is some great potential and I really hope they work with what they have in the future, but for now there is nothing. Ooh I don't remember anything, ooh the Dark guy doesn't remember anything, but he looks just like the Dark Wizard, oo do you know there are floating continents, ooh The Edge of Solemn, oo Lilith might be the next Dark Wizard, oo when i'm ready i will find out something, oo what if we need to fight again, oooooohhhh NOTHING. NOTHING. NOTHING. That's what you will find. There is 0 explanation or resolution for the memories gone plots for you and Dark. There is nothing in the Edge of Solemn. There is no way for you reach any other place, continent, floating whatever. There is nothing more about Lilith. I expected something like a magical train station where you can go visit those magical places everyone keeps talking about, new quests, new towns, maybe new house, like how Stardew Valley did the Ginger Island plot. Nope. Excuse me for expecting something after the dozens of hints that I have to expect something. 5. Things are not really explained. I had to google to find out that the boat doesn't require 10,000 planks for example. I had to find a guide for the flower breeding, because even tho Willow does tell you to put the flowers together, it's not really explained which flower + which makes what. I could respect that maybe it's on purpose so you can experiment with the combinations, but the combinations don't make sense. Since when does white + white equal blue? Found out at the 4th year you can sell more than 1 item per stall. The coffee shops allows you to buy 3 coffees at once, but then doesn't give you 3 separate boosts? It's not bad per se, you still enjoy the game, it's fine, but it is annoying and could save you time. Overall the whole story needs a lot of work to make this a full fledged game. Things I love: 1. Flowers. They are pretty, the breeding system is unique (once you learn from Google about it), and watering them doesn't take energy. 2. No annoying mechanics. Cutting trees, fishing, cooking, nothing is annoying or hard. 3. The townfolks. They all have different personalities, their houses beautifully represent that. Most of them give you blueprints for buildings. 4. Decorating. The houses, statues, buildings, decor, everything is beautiful. The paths are fun and colorful. You can spend hours just decorating. That to me is probably the most interesting thing in any games so I appreciated it. It's kind of annoying what the requirements of some people are, just because I imagined some townfolks being neighbours with others, but the buildings they want or don't want to be near are not really compatible. I had this beautiful design from the start with my house, Willow's house, the Marketplaces, and then I come to find out Willow doesn't want to live next to the Marketplace. I had to put her just close enough to me but still far and it messed up with the other part of town. It was a bit disappointing, but hey, I'm not gonna run across the map to get my money so she can go, lol. 5. The house pages. It was fun looking for the specific beds and decor each of them want. 6. The tarot monster game. At first I wasn't interested and didn't get it, but in one day I went from level 5 to level 90. It's cool once you understand what's going on. I do like the grind, I love completing games, finding out as much as possible as soon as possible. I love that there are a lot of things you can do in the game, lots of skills to max out, items to buy, etc. The lack of story and payoff does leave you disappointed in the end. I will still get it to 100%, just because I like it, and I haven't done all, like I'm still wondering who to marry and if it makes any difference. God, I've never left such a long review of a game before.

First of all: until you finish the game, you wouldn't know it has no ending and it actually is NOT finished by developers. I won't say "don't buy", since, at least at first, the game is super cool, and it might give you a couple of really pleasant hours. Or maybe even tens of hours - if you like the grind. But by all means, DO NOT expect any ending. You can 100% it if you'd like, it's not so hard and not so time consuming, and the achievements are pretty. But don't do it for the sake of the story. The story is unfinished by the devs, the very end is simply missing. Now, my humble opinion on the gameplay: It's an ingenious mix of roulette and grind. It feels like nicely balanced and cute grinder at first, but in the end it would remove last bit of oxygen from the room. It will reward you with generous, cheat-like skill bonuses in the end game, but the trick is: it barely helps to "fix" the hell of requirements that the game will set before you. Mostly it's that you need some rare item, and till the endgame it's really hard to obtain one (but you've already got dozen, because *grind*, so they occasionally dropped to you once in a while). But the game doesn't care that you already has some, you need to [b]obtain[/b] one. Or you've already spent 10 you had and you need 2 more. Anyway, in the endgame, you still won't be able to just farm such things. It's just that now you have a somewhat-cheaty random drop on every action, so that previous rareness of items is now replaced by "fun roulette grind". It sounds fun, but after ~50 hours of monotone grind such twist actually feels gameplay-breaking. Imagine DOOM, you're getting good, you try and repeat, and finally get to the final level... which is a huge damn arena with millions of monsters, but you're immortal, and there's only Wabbajack in your arsenal. It's perfectly beatable, it's kind of fun, but it could take a lot of time to beat and it's highly unsatisfactory after all the road behind. What's even worse, there's no final... something. It's no surprise there's no battle - there's no fighting mechanic in the game, and from the start it tells you that you've fought enough. so it would be naive to expect the final fight (or it being an actual *fight*). But there's also no final dialogue, no cutscene and no NPCs. There's no acknowledgement whatsoever of the hero being finally able to jump to the World below. Guys tell you that they would help you there, down below, and yet there's no contextual dialogs with them when you get to that pit. Just nothing. I mean, devs could've finished this with just a one-liner. Just as a fact of acknowledgement that the player got there. That the player got there... I tried so hard, and got so far, but in the end, noone cares. Not a single NPC acknowledge my ability to go down the pit. Just a dead end with a coule of developer-tester-grade cheat items. I don't want them. I want my wife to acknowledge what I've reached. I want Dark to say at least "wow, you've got there". I want Dalton to joke about the pit. I mean, I want some closure. The game hurt me deeply. Don't you ever leave an ending in your game like this. Ever.

I think this game has a lot to like if you're not invested in it. It's good to pick up for an in-game day or two and put down until tomorrow, and the mechanics/systems are simple enough to allow for this. If 5-10 hours of that is all that you want out of this game, I recommend you try it. But if you're like me and you play games for the story and challenge, there's nothing for you at the end of the road. The game will barely acknowledge you gathering everything up, reaching level 99 in each skill, etc. You will not be properly rewarded for investing in the characters and making it to the final area. Any story the game introduces in the beginning will be ignored, there is no closure outside [spoiler] the cut scenes when you get married, which have nothing to do with the story outside of telling the player who starts dating who [/spoiler]. I found after a certain point I was playing just to check the boxes, to at least get the satisfaction of 100% completing it after all the time I put in at the beginning. Having achieved that today I think I'm content to move on, but I couldn't recommend the experience to other players like me.

It's shallow and feels abandoned, but I had a good few hours of fun so, yeah. But really not worth purchasing at full price, though, not when Stardew Valley and Fields of Mistria (which still in EA!) exist. I really wish there was a neutral rating.

I wanted to like this game because pixel simulation games are my favorites, but it needs a lot of tweaks, including bug fixes, balance, and making it less grindy. None of which are going to be addressed because it's clear the devs ditched the game.