Game: Littlewood
Genre: Adventure, Simulation, Role-Playing
System: Nintendo Switch (also on Steam)
Developers | Publishers: Sean Young | SmashGames
Age Rating: EU TBC | US E
Price: US $14.99 | EU TBC | UK TBC
Release Date: February 25th, 2021
I purchased the game myself!
Littlewood is a new addition to the simulation genre of games on the Switch. Originally a Kickstarter campaign started by developer Sean Lewis. The Kickstarter campaign was a resounding success with 3,952 backers pledging $82,061 to help bring the game to life on February 11, 2019! It made its debut on Steam last year. Now it’s time to find out what it holds in store for Nintendo Switch players.
Customise your Character
As the game opens up the first thing you get to do is customise your character. Hair colour style, skin tones, outfit,  and you can even pick your personality. After that the story kicks in. You have returned from a harrowing adventure, where you fought the evil wizard and saved the world. With balance restored to the Land of Solemn, you find your way to the town of Littlewood, a small enclave that’s home to a couple of your closest friends Willow and Dalton. And as is normal in the gaming world: with no memory of the past.
Customise How You Want
From the start of the game, you have the ability to fully customise the town and give it a name. You can move buildings, shape landscapes and water features, and drag and drop trees or flowers to design the perfect, personalised town all of your own. You’ll also need to build new homes to house new residents that want to come and live in Littlewood. Or whatever name you have chosen for your town. As well as construct community buildings like a tavern, coffee shop, general store, and town hall office so the town can thrive. And you’re not limited to your little town, either, pretty soon you’ll be able to travel to forests, caves, a port city and other areas.
Build Relationships
You build up relationships with the residents who move to your town by talking with them or hanging out as you go about your daily business. Once per day you can compliment or flirt with any resident, which can eventually lead to dating and marriage. Each resident-only gives a line or two of dialogue per day, but it is all endearing enough to give them distinct personalities.
There’s Bubsy who is a bird-folk foodie with a superiority complex. Lilith is a mage who can’t control her powers and is paranoid no one talks to her. Each of the residents has just enough depth to keep you from getting bored but not so much that they become the centre of the game.
Terraforming Included
Since you have been tasked with building Littlewood up, you can shape the town how you like. With the press of a button, you can build cliffs, pathways, and ponds for fishing. You have complete and easy control over where everyone’s house goes. By building up Littlewood and meeting certain requirements, more and more residents will come to Littlewood, allowing you to build more houses and more businesses.
At the start of the game, you receive blueprints to make a desk, and you’re going to want to put this in everyone’s house, as it allows you to access every resident’s personal wishes. Wishes such as Willow wanting her house closer to your house, or how they want their house to be decorated with wallpaper, flooring and furniture.
Special Events
If you talk to the residents every day and they grow to like you, their affection for you grows. Raising their levels will also unlock special events with them.
These are usually little scenes where residents talk to one another in the town square. Once someone decides they want to move to your town, they’ll give you the blueprint for their house, and once you build that they’ll be officially moved in.
Craft, Mine and Fish
Like all simulation games, there are lots of things to do every day. Crafting, fishing, looking after your crops. Mining for ore and stones and visiting the forest to chop wood. There is no concept of time in Littlewood. Instead, your Stamina will function as time!
As you use tools and perform actions, your stamina bar will fill. When you’re nearly out of stamina for the day, the scene will shift to night-time, a clear indication that you need to start wrapping things up and head home. Or you can be like me and totally ignore the scene and you will eventually collapse, starting the next day with less stamina. What can I say, I never did like being told to go to bed!
Optimized Gameplay
It’s the ease that Littlewood offers the player that makes it so fun to play. For instance, everything is optimized but a streamlined version of familiar gameplay, making your actions as effortless and intuitive as possible. You’ll never have to switch tools to go from mining rocks to chopping wood as all tools are mapped to the A button, so all you have to do is stand in front of a thing and tap A to use the relevant item. Similarly, your pockets must be massive as you never run out of room. This cuts out the need to time managing your inventory and saving up for a little more room just to store all your valuable tools.
Inspiration from Other Games
Think of the farming aspect of Stardew Valley and the customising of Animal Crossing, with a sprinkling of Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons, put them together and you get Littlewood, only on a smaller scale. It’s pretty clear while playing Littlewood that the creator, Sean Young, drew a lot of inspiration from titles like those, but definitely put his own unique spin on things.
Visuals and Controls
Littlewood has 2D pixel art, I’m not really a lover of the retro look as I remember the days when the look was standard for all games. But I do like the charming atmosphere and whimsical sense of style that Littlewood gives off. The music which isn’t a chiptune to fit with the games retro look is soothing and as chilled out as the gameplay is.
Littlewood controls very well using the joy-cons. As I’ve mentioned the game is streamlined with the use of ease for the player in mind. Nothing is more than a button press away to complete. The game runs as you would expect it to on the Nintendo Switch without any frame rate or glitch problems.
Conclusion
Littlewood is a chilled out game, with positive vibes and a heart-warming story. The streamlined gameplay makes the game a joy to play, without the hassle of having to switch tools.
Sean Young should be very proud of his little game and rightly so. For fans of this genre, Littlewood is a place you must visit. You will be warmly welcomed and live a life of peace and calm.
Final Verdict: Two Thumbs Up