Littlewood Review

What happens after the hero has saved the world? They get amnesia and become the mayor of a town, of course. And that is exactly what Littlewood is about. Play as the hero of the story and develop an entire town from the ground up with the help of some of your buddies and some newcomers in this life simulator.

There isn't much to say about the story regarding Littlewood given it has a similar story to others within the genre such as Stardew Valley and My Time at Portia. However, different to these, Littlewood has a major emphasis on its city builder aspect that is incorporated seamlessly.

Littlewood starts incredibly small. The hero is accompanied by Willow and Dalton, two characters that knew the protagonist prior to the memory loss. It's here where Willow teaches the player quickly how to build the town and decorate whilst Dalton teaches the player how to sleep, as Dalton does. Or, so does the hero think because they have no prior recollection before this!

Slowly throughout the days, we are introduced to brand-new characters for a total of 15, all apart from one of which are romanceable. Although it is possible to romance each of them, throughout the different save files that my wife and I had — where we both married different people — there were very few differences between them. Some characters have more dialogue than others which can be sorely disappointing when your favourite character turns out to be one of the ones that don't have many lines incorporated. However, there were enough to keep me satisfied and it really encouraged talking to every resident of your town and getting to know all of them.

Each of the 15 residents can be levelled up in one of two ways: platonically and romantically. To level up your friendship with these characters, you can select the "hangout" option that appears shortly after the game begins. Once this happens, the person you are hanging out with will get a boost in levels as you do just about anything. Mining, fishing, farming, it doesn't matter, they'll be ecstatic that they're accompanying the hero throughout these journeys.

That being said, although the social aspect of Littlewood can be a bit disappointing, everything you do leads up to something else, and that is where the game truly shines. Picking up some weeds? Congratulations, your "Gathering" skill gets some experience. And all of this works towards reaching the max level of 99 with everything. 10 different skills each with 99 levels is sure to keep you distracted for several countless hours of farming to max them all.

Littlewood's greatest strength, however, is its city building. You can expand your town several times to get a favourable size. In fact, it can get so big that I was capable of having different, reasonably-sized chunks for all of my favourite characters all the while having each one of the 15 residents present in my town. There are tons of decorations and things to unlock that will allow you to spruce up your town and make it beautiful.

That being said, there is one major thing I sincerely disliked, and that is the criminally low amount of trees you can have in your town. I didn't make mine the biggest possible, but I ran out of trees because I wanted to have a little forest area for one of the characters that loves the woods, which led to me not being able to have many trees around the town at all. 

Several things have a limit that can be placed around the town. You can have 30 trees, 36 fruit trees (they're different, smaller versions), and 36 crops. This was a huge letdown because of everything else that you can do in the town to make it beautiful.

Despite that limitation, the town has several layers that will allow you to have more depth with up to three total levels. I was smitten with how gorgeous my town looked whenever I walked around it because, despite the game's simplistic graphics, it truly was a sight to behold. My favourite part of the city-building is that nothing present in the game is an absolute must. If you don't want to have a particular resident in your town, that's completely fine, you can just remove their house and pretend they never existed to begin with. The world is your canvas, and that's what's beautiful about this game.

However, I did have a quarrel with the autumn and winter months in the game. Whilst spring and summer were gorgeous to look at with beautiful green hues, the colour palette that the town becomes with these two seasons is an eyesore — this was only further accentuated by the choice of letting weeds and flowers remain a green hue despite the season change.

One very minor gripe I have with Littlewood is its audio design. Although the music was fine, it didn't captivate me in the way that I wished it did to fit the overall relaxing and beautiful aesthetic of the game. However, the worst offender was the repeating sounds regarding wood-cutting and mining. Although these aren't bad or particularly ear-piercing, after the 70 hours it took me to 100% the game, I was a bit tired of it sounding over and over again.

Although it falls a bit short with the social aspects incorporated such as the marriage system that felt lacking, as a collect-a-thon and city builder, Littlewood does wonders, with tons of content and things to collect and complete.