Apples Busy Day

Very cute, mildly funny, rather short adventure game. I am sure the majority of Zertuk's fans knew her for her short but sweet Metroidvanias (maybe some previous games exist, but they're neither here nor on itch). While there are vague traces of that in here (you are particularly limited in your range at first by one particular item, a few others do serve as more than just key items, and there's even one super convenient optional upgrade halfway through), this is mostly one of those exploration games which secretly are one giant fetch quest with plenty of smaller fetch quests inside of it. Thankfully you can advance in plenty of these before you're formally presented with the required quest, so it's not like you'll be wasting your time by exploring. My biggest complaint with regards to gameplay is that while the paths around the island aren't strictly linear, you still have to retread a good chunk of ground, particularly late game (it's still barely over an hour playing suboptimally, so it's not [b]that[/b] bad). Oh yeah, there's also two mini-games, which work perfectly fine for what they're needed but won't have you craving for them to be made into full length games. But yeah, as with many of these cutesy games, the main draw isn't the gameplay challenge so much as the cast and their dialogue (accompanied by BanjoKazooiesque vocalisations). And the cast continues to be quite charming, as it happened with Zertuk's two previous games. The stakes aren't high unlike in SJ-19, but the titular Apple is well characterised and you can understand her motivations. Sadly most of the characters aren't too fleshed out outside of their quests and there's almost no proper post-quest dialogue for the majority of characters. I say that because the few examples where the characters get "more than what was needed" are the game's highlights. But you know, it's a cheap little adventure game, it's not pretending to be the next Disco Elysium. This wasn't the most enthusiastic review, but honestly you probably knew whether this was for you or not from the first few screenshots and this review (and others) are just here to reassure you there's nothing wrong hiding under the surface.