Littlewood Review (Nintendo Switch)

Littlewood (Nintendo Switch)

Release: January 1, 1970
Publisher: SmashGames-Sean Young - E
Developer:
Genre: Switch Reviews
PEGI:
Comments:

 

Comment

As stated in my first impressions last week:

Littlewood is a game that seems to take inspiration from many others but presented in a way I have never seen before. This game technically starts at the end. There was already turmoil in your world. Your character defeated the Dark Wizard. The world of Solemn is finally at peace, but at what cost? You can’t quite remember.

You start the game with pretty much a blank canvas, you are greeted by your friend who instantly gets you up and working after your three days of slumber from your battle with the Dark Wizard. You have what looks like at the surface a landscape similar to something you would see in Stardew Valley, except you are literally building everything. Someone comes to town? You have to build them a house, you need stores, taverns, marketplaces so on and so forth. You meet many different townsfolk right off the bat who give you objectives to improve your town, and in some cases help unlock your memories. You can chop wood, mine ore, and collect items to help you upgrade your town or sell for profit. Many of the townsfolk also have things they would like, some might want to live near you, or have a special desk or item in their home. The more you can grant their wishes the more is unlocked in this magical game.

Eventually, as you begin to develop your town they put you officially in charge in a mayor-like role giving you access to perks and other things. It’s like a hybrid of Animal Crossing and Happy Home Designer in these aspects. As you start to run out of resources, you find a way to discover other areas to meet new people and get more items like enchanted forests, fishing towns, and mining caves to name a few.

The game gives you complete freedom on how to design your down with terraforming to make mountains or lakes, so on and so forth. You can put town hall right in the middle, you can have all your villagers on one long road close together. The main focus of the game is to build relationships and improve the town. Eventually as you complete tasks, goals, and wishes you unlock even more to implement like coffee shops which give you perks for the day in a specific skill such as mining or woodcutting to a museum to catalog everything in Littlewood you have discovered. As you continue to build relationships with your townsfolk, more and more becomes unlocked with items they give you or buildings to make. You keep on grinding to improve your town and structures to further moving to the “end-game”. Eventually as you continue to build on your relationships with folks you can begin to date them as well. You can focus on your farming and growing numerous different flowers, trees, fruits, and veggies. Or perhaps you want to get your iron chef on and make and sell a variety of dishes to townsfolk, you can do that too. There is so much to learn and love in Littlewood.

There is just so much here in this game it’s hard to believe it was designed by a one-man army.  The game to me has got its hooks in real good as I am addicted to the loop. Somedays I’m doing absolutely nothing but mining, and other days I am upgrading all over the place. The fact that it is so deep with no fighting or combat whatsoever is amazing. Littlewood really takes the best from other games and mashes it all together. If you enjoy games like Stardew Valley, Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing, and the like, I strongly urge you to give Littlewood a shot. I am going to continue to play this one for a long time to come.