Pilo and the Holobook

Cute and colorful adventure game. Good for kids, or adults who want to chill out with something simple.

good game

A nice short cozy game, it is a collectathon type game, where you go around collecting stickers to fill up the holobook, or at least as much as possible cuz you do not need 100% completion to finish the game, but you do need that for achievements. The art is beautiful, soundtrack is relaxing, main character is cute, the story is one of those pro-environment/ anti-pollution type ones, you know, something like Avatar or The Lorax, and in the case of this game the threat to the planets it’s called Tar. As for the gameplay; everything revolves around collecting stickers. You do this by standing still and pressing the A button (controller) and spinning around. Ok, it is not that random, you can aim at objects to scan them, this will give you a sticker if you didn’t scan the object before. That is basically it, go around, point at objects (everything from building ruins, to plants, animals and even people) and scan them. You get one sticker per object and you cannot scan an object multiple times for duplicate stickers. Certain interactions like introducing a code to open a door, you also do it by arranging stickers, not by interacting with the code console in the level. Those interactions are rare, but just keep in mind, that everything revolves around stickers. The puzzles are simple, once you figure them out. After all the game uses only the A button, the others just open menus. So, the only things you can do is move and scan. Let me take what I thought the most complicated puzzle. In the desert you get to scan map portions marked with X, at that X you scan another object which gives you a compass sticker, you use the compass to find the other clues and eventually find an item to unlock a door. What I mean with this, is that completing the puzzles is easy, figuring them out is the harder part. But as simple as the game is, it could’ve used some QoL improvements, the most important being a sprint button, while most areas are small indeed, I could’ve used one especially in the desert zone. Another is something more petty, the book size, some areas give 50+ stickers, so if you do not organize them right it makes a cluster f in the only 2 pages you can use. Another is the fact that after you explore a planet and return to the shuttle, this shuttle returns you home automatically, this is annoying a bit if you just wana explore another planet right away. Additional notes: starting with the stickers; you can rotate and scale certain stickers, not all, there are special ones which you can only rotate. You get to upgrade the holobook during the story, so if at first you see blocked areas, don’t worry, they will open up as you advance. The last chapter is a let-down, it’s just a big cutscene with barely any gameplay. The game auto-saves every time you enter/exit a zone. Regarding achievements, do not worry about finishing the game, you can get 100% afterwards because if you resume after finishing, it puts you back before interacting with the NPC which triggers the end chapter. So in brief, it might be too short and lacking in additional content (game is very linear, I think only 1 side content is present and very few puzzles) to justify 12 bucks, but I do rec it during a sale.

A fun and cute little adventure story. Hunting for and collecting all the stickers is really the heart of the game and takes the lion's share of the playtime to accomplish. One or two of the puzzles were a little challenging if you aren't very observant, but everything else was fairly easy to solve without much head scratching. I got about a dollar an hour of entertainment out of it so I was very pleased with it and can easily recommend it.

A really nice, charming, cozy game with a cute art style. If you enjoy exploring things at a leisurely pace, this is the game for you.

Fun and pretty quick game, liked the artstyle!

I had so much fun playing this game! Wish there was even more of it!