Littlewood

Such a cute and cozy game! I have also put some hours into the Switch version. 135 to be exact. I particularly like how rather than having energy or stamina your actions cause time to pass instead. I've been unable to find a game that feels similar enough to scratch the itch that Littlewood created in me so subsequent playthroughs are a must.

Littlewood is everything I wanted in a farming simulator/town builder hybrid. I've been staring at Littlewood in my backlog for years now. I've adored the pixel art and simplistic aesthetic. I finally decided to pick it up for the prompt, "play through an entire in-game year in a farming/life simulator." I regret nothing. Littlewood is essentially Stardew Valley meets Forager. It's an extremely simplistic, watered-down (pun intended) version of Stardew Valley. There's no swapping to different tools, upgrading your equipment, or even watering your crops. There's one action button that takes care of everything: farming, mining, woodcutting, fishing, bug catching, etc. However, Littlewood also shares similarities with Animal Crossing in the museum. You're required to donate every item in the game to the museum for a big reward. But let me stop comparing Littlewood to other games, because it definitely stands apart on its own. Like typical farming sims, you begin your journey in Littlewood with nothing to your name. Once you pluck weeds from your town and sell them, you can finally start upgrading to new locations and new items. This is where Littlewood shone for me. There are so many upgrades in the game that you can focus on. Think about any landmark in a typical farming/life sim, and you can upgrade it in Littlewood. Each landmark can be upgraded to level 10, but once you upgrade it once, you can't upgrade it until the next day. That's part of the reason why I never felt like I ran out of things to do in Littlewood. It wasn't until very late in the winter months that I finally felt like I was narrowing down on my upgrades. As you unlock new areas, you can recruit new townpeople to Littlewood. However, they'll need a place to live, and that requires you to build their home. However, these villagers have specific requests when it comes to the placement of their home, and you won't know that until you build them a desk. Some villagers might want to live close to you, while others might want to live close to the museum. This is where Littlewood started to become a tad overwhelming for me. I'm not one to care about the town layout in games, so this felt a little bit too much like a chore. Since this person can't live next to this person, but that person wants to live close to the museum, it can get confusing, especially when you've already outlined the town in your head. The beauty of Littlewood is that you don't really have to pay attention to these details until much later in the game, since the other upgrades are more important anyway. One unique feature I haven't touched upon yet is the stamina/clock system. In most farming sims, you have both an in-game clock and a stamina bar. Every action depletes your stamina bar, but there's typically food that can restore it if you want to do more in a game. In Littlewood, the stamina bar IS the in-game clock and vice versa. That means it's an extremely low-stakes system where you don't have to race the clock. This was such a breath of fresh air, as I feel like I'm always racing the clock in games like this. However, I quickly started to notice its flaws. Almost every action requires stamina in this game: complimenting a villager, harvesting crops, catching a fish, mining a rock, cooking a meal, etc. That means the days are extremely short. It wasn't until I was able to purchase the pocket watch upgrade in early winter that the game finally opened up for me. The pocket watch allows you to reverse the stamina bar/clock back to where it was when the day started. This essentially carries out your days and gives you an infinite stamina bar. Once I unlocked the pocket watch, I was upgrading things pretty quickly, but then the game started to slow down. It's really a tough balance for a game like this, and I don't feel like the pocket watch changes this. I really wanted to 100% this game, but most of the achievements are just time-wasters like "chop 6,000 trees." If you're playing the game for more than one in-game year, you'll probably end up doing that anyway, but after one in-game year, I felt satisfied with all that I had done. I married Maximillian (best boy, btw), planted every crop, donated every item to the museum except the flowers, and upgraded almost every landmark in my town. I will come back to this one day when I have another itch to play it. Overall, Littlewood really did exceed my expectations. It's not a perfect game, but it does introduce enough new mechanics to the farming sim genre that make it worth at least a bit of your time. Just don't rush to get the pocket watch like I did. Sometimes, shorter days are better.

A bit more casual / lacking depth than I expected which I think made it hard for me to continue.

I was looking for a game that scratched my itch for something like Dark Cloud and Dark Cloud 2 where you get to build a town and meeting certain decorative requirements can you give you rewards and upgrades. This is where this game stops being anything like DC 1 or 2 and becomes a fun desendent pf Animal CrossingC/Stardew Valley.

A super cozy and comforting game! If you love games like Stardew Valley, this is a no brainer! I've lost hours in what feels like minutes building my little town, levelling up my skills in a no-stress environment that still presented a fun challenge, and there's lots to explore! Getting to know the NPCs is always my favourite part of games like these, and the diverse cast of Littlewood does not disappoint. Adorable dialogue that had me squealing! The story unfolds at a great pace, and the lore! I'll leave it up to future players to discover just how good it is. ;) Thanks to the developer for the cutest game i've discovered in a while! Can't wait to see what else it has in store!

Unexpectedly, became one of my favorite games to play. I wanted to see it through until the very end. The characters are so fun to interact with and the need to explore is never satisfied. Don't miss out on this game, it is fantastic.

Sadly, overall it's disappointing but has so much potential. But since the last update was 3 years ago I don't expect any changes. Two examples: 1: It has a skill system but the skills apparently serve no other purpose than enabling you to open a chest once you reach level 50 in that skill. 2: Fish change every season but there is only one fish per season to catch and it's the same fish as any other season, just with a different texture. Also no matter where you fish (village, city, caves, forest), you can only catch this one seasonal fish.