Littlewood

Littlewood ist a quite charming game in the beginning. The setting is nice, the characters are also interesting. Building up the town is fun in the beginning. Unfortunately the game wears out it´s welcome after a while. For certain achievements you need to do too much work. Some resources are too rare and it is vey hard to get them, so getting all the final upgrades is a menial task. Some aspects aren´t that well-thought out, e.g. you can disable the dark trees in the Endless Forest later on, still they spawn and sometimes make getting to some spaces impossible if the game spawns them so that you can´t get there. I also don´t like the fact that receiving a gift costs you energy - if you don´t have energy left, talk to a NPC and suddenly get knocked out it´s certainly not so funny. In the end, the game could also have used more places - basically you are just grinding resources in the Endless Forest and the Dust Caverns, with the other places offering not that much. Overall, it´s ok for a while, but nothing to motivate you to play to its full extent.

This game is the answer to other farming sims having a sort of built-in anxiety. There's no time pressure. There's only the energy bar. "Night" is the last 10% of your bar. The only penalty for doing one last action is that you lose the first 25% of the next day's energy. This ultimately isn't much of a punishment. After a few days or a week of playing, you'll get a shiny watch that resets the entire bar for you. There's seasons and a calendar, but ultimately there's no penalty for just passing out in the forest every night for two years. The events repeat every single year, and there are no "have X relationship by X day" type requirements either. In other words, if you need a smooth drip of the good brain juice and even Stardew Valley seems like too much for you, just pull up this game. No idea what to play? Play this game while you decide on the night's vibes. It's THAT low pressure. And hey, worst case scenario, it's on GOG. You can get it self-refunded if it doesn't pan out.

Pros: If you make a mistake putting something down, you can pick it up & move it without rebuilding it. You can move any existing building too without have to re-build it. Fishing is a bit too easy but not rage inducing like another game *cough* SDV *cough* The banter of the NPCs is pleasant without being sappy. Visually the game is very easy on the eyes. It has some humor in it, mild G-rated chuckles for all. It has a nice feeling of progression. Cons: I'd personally wish for an menu interface I could see all the time versus hitting ESC to bring up the menu and close it, but I'll get use to it.

Even though the game isn't complete yet, it already feels full-fledged. I really love building things up and this hits the spot. You run around gathering things (time progresses only when you perform actions, so you're not under pressure), discovering a metric ton of hidden places and items, talking to characters, and creating everything from food to houses. My only quibble is that in this otherwise relaxing game, there are a couple timed events. Being disabled, I perform abysmally, and being a bit of a completionist, feel frustrated at being locked out. However, that does not detract from how charming and fun this game is. I look at it and think, 'it's already fantastic, and it'll soon have even more to enjoy!'

I was surprised by how much depth Littlewood turned out to have; it's a wonderfully laid-back city building, gathering, crafting and adventuring game with no combat and no need for min/maxing. The way this game balances time - through measuring the length of a day by the PC's energy bar, and not the clock - makes this both an excellent little "dip in" distraction and also an addictive "just one day more!" game for longer play sessions. There's quite a lot to do in Littlewood, and I'm yet to be bored with it; the terraforming and city planning aspect of this game is surprisingly strong and intuitive to use, the possibilities for crafting and decorating seem endless, and you aren't subject to "crunch time" or some external pressure to do X before Y or during a certain season as you would be with games such as Stardew Valley. The characters have great personalities and backstories, and the humour in this game is delightful and not mean-spirited - overall great writing. The soundtrack is lovely, too. Highly recommended, if you enjoy games like SDV, Harvest Moon or Animal Crossing.