Game: Inside Grass: A little adventure
Genre: Adventure, Puzzle, Role-Playing
System: Nintendo Switch (also on Steam and Android)
Developers | Publishers: PrimeBit Games
Age Rating: EU 3+ | USA E
Price: EU €4,99 | USD $4.99 | UK £4.49
Release Date: October 8th, 2020
Review code used, with many thanks to PrimeBit Games
Inside Grass: A Little Adventure originally released on mobile, is an adventure game. It’s the story of two children who have been magically reduced to the size of ants.
Choose Your Hero
Your choices for a character once starting the game are between male and female. Once you have made that difficult decision, you are treated to a few storyboard cut scenes which tell you the story. There isn’t any text or voice acting and what little story there is, is told to you visually.
Two children go digging for treasure and dig up a mysterious blue shard. Upon touching the shard the children are magically shrunk in size, separated and fall into a strange place.
Now, your character is the size of an insect and everything around them is far larger than they are. You will spend your time exploring the world around you, avoiding obstacles such as giant grown-up ants and you’ll be completing quests and developing your character.
Armed with a Wooden Sword
You travel along a linear path clearing the way and picking up fruit that restores your health. Armed with your handy wooden sword in hand, you find an old bottle cap to use a shield.
It’s a fairly linear path you take in Inside Grass: A Little Adventure, and you’ll encounter lots of bugs (of the insect kind) and play some mini-games. Mini-games include such gems as finding a pair of shears and cutting the grass blocking your way by swiping on the screen left to right. Or find an axe to cut down a wooden gate ( I bet it’s just match sticks) blocking your path and time your chopping action to hit the screen at the right time.
You’ll do quests for various insects, such as finding a magical book for an ant. When you find the book the ant tells you to keep it and the book will show you stat information about the bug enemies.
Fighting is Basic
Fighting any foe you come across is about as basic as it comes. You have two choices in how to fight, you can either mash the A button quickly to wear down a foes health bar. And the other choice is to set the fight to automatic by pressing the X button. You don’t see the fight, that just happens somewhere in the background. Instead, the info-box on-screen changes from a foe stats screen to another screen saying you have won or lost. There is no need to master any special moves as there aren’t any. You have an attack, defense and speed stats that can be increased by using skill points collected during battles.
There is no denying that Inside Grass: A little Adventure was a mobile game before it made its way to the Nintendo Switch. After playing the game for a while I can truly say it still plays like a mobile game. The character sprites don’t so much look as though they are walking it’s more of a shuffle effect in the animation.
There is no finesse needed or deep thinking about where to assign your character stats as it’s simplistic adventure/RPG game. While I flew through the game and it didn’t offer me much of a challenge, that’s not to say it won’t offer a challenge to younger players.
And this is where I think Inside Grass: A Little Adventure would shine, in the hands of a child playing their first RPG game. It would be a fantastic starting game for young budding gamers to find their feet in the world of gaming.
Visuals and Controls
While the artwork and animation won’t blow your socks off with the look of the game, it’s adequate for what it is. The surrounding environments of each level are fine with colourful and bright visuals. As are the sound effects and music that backs it up.
The game controls via the joy-cons or the touchscreen and both work equally well.
Conclusion
Inside Grass: A little Adventure isn’t going to win any awards for its gameplay nor its visual presentation. However, there is a child out there somewhere who would be more than happy to spend some gaming time with Inside Grass: A little Adventure and enjoy their time with it. While I did enjoy the game it certainly wasn’t a challenge for me to play.
So, if you’re looking something inexpensive to amuse your children for an hour or two maybe Inside Grass: A little Adventure could be that game.
Final Verdict: I Like It 