I spent a couple of hours immersed in the fantastic world of Littlelands. It’s a rollicking adventure game with a lot of heart and superb graphics.
The Backstory of Littlelands
Although Littlelands does not specifically say it, I believe it’s a regular-sized world filled with very small, imaginative-looking people. Some of the plants may look normal-sized, but occasionally I find a house or another object that is obviously normal-sized and shows me exactly how small the characters are. Like the one below.
At the beginning of the demo, I was playing a video game on my PC. Suddenly, there was some sort of event causing an ancient-looking temple to appear somewhere within the world of Littleland. The event also caused my PC to break, which ended my gaming time. Bummer. When I told my Abuela what had happened, she said it was probably all for the best since I didn’t get enough time outdoors anyway. She asked me to go and find her a Wandia berry, and since I had nothing else to do, I grabbed my backpack and my adventure began!
The Look and Feel of Littlelands
Littlelands is a 3D low-poly open-world game, and it’s absolutely gorgeous!! Everything is superb looking, bright and colorful. In the demo, I found items which you can pick up, items which you can drag and items which you can break. As I walked around, I could hear my footsteps, and when I was walking through water, I could hear splashes. I love it when games have great attention to detail like that. In some parts of the game, the soundtrack is light and jaunty, while in other areas (like the caves), it’s a bit more pensive.
There are plants all over Littlelands which can be harvested, and it’s so easy to do! Just a quick press of a button on my controller, and the plant is harvested and in my backpack. Oh, my backpack makes a cool unzipping noise every time I open it, too. There is also wood on the ground which can be picked up automatically, just by walking near it. The plants I can interact with glow, which made it easy for me to find them and the wood pieces sent up bubbles to alert me of their presence.
The Gameplay of Littlelands
Littlelands began with a very comprehensive (and funny!) tutorial. Once that was completed, I was free to explore whatever and wherever I chose. The gameplay began in the residential area, and I was able to meet a lot of NPCs there. I also learned that there are large jars scattered around which have gems and health points for me. I just had to hit the jars to break them open. I actually enjoyed that a lot, it makes a fun shattering sound! There were a variety of terrains for me to explore in the demo. These include the village, the woods and a series of caves. Littlelands has a day/night cycle, which does not affect gameplay a lot, but it does get dark at night, and it’s hard to see. The caves are always dark.
I was provided with a very nice collection of tools to use in Littlelands, with more to come. The ones I used in the demo were a backpack, a quest journal and a compendium of the items I had found so far. The quest journal included detailed descriptions of the quests as well as whether they were completed or not. I always appreciate having that information handy. Another tool, of sorts, that I could use is the NPCs themselves!! If I tried to dig up an item that I should not, I get a subtle shake of the head, meaning “no”.
In the demo of Littlelands I was given a variety of quests by the NPCs. These included finding the Wandia berries for my Abuela, picking plants of different colors so the local barber can make hair dye, finding one woman’s young child who has wandered off and lost his diary, selling flowers at the florist shop, seeing the local fitness guru 2 more days in a row to gain something and finding a person’s hat When I amass enough gems I can also increase the size of my backpack, which would be very handy!
Littlelands had an autosave feature as well as a button to save when I wanted to. I played the demo for over 3 hours, and I feel I’ve barely scratched the surface!! I’ve just learned to fish (it’s pretty easy and fun!) and soon I will be able to collect fossils and minerals for the town museum. I have to admit that I found it difficult to navigate, as there is no map currently. I see in the Steam comments that there have been many requests for one, so that is something that the dev team is currently discussing internally. In the full game, I will also be able to fast travel via a balloon, which sounds like a lot of fun!
Final Thoughts
One thing that I was not keen on was combat. There were 2 types of combat in the demo. One was pretty easy and actually enjoyable; I was fighting small critters. But there was a boss battle in the demo which caused me to die. All that happened was I came back at my last save spot, but I know I am simply not good at combat in general and usually don’t find it fun. The Steam page is very clear that I could choose to go to the dangerous parts of the world (which have combat) or stay in the safe areas, farming, cooking, fishing, catching insects and finding treasure, to name a few activities. It’s not clear to me if I would be missing anything important by avoiding the boss battles; I hope not. I’ll keep my eye on that aspect of the game as it progresses.
In spite of my reservations about the combat, I still liked this game a lot and look forward to the full game release. It’s still being developed and there is no projected release date at this point. In the meantime, you can try the demo of Littlelands on Steam and see what you think for yourself. I thought it was a lot of fun and really beautiful.
Do you like our content?
Support LadiesGamers as a member on Patreon!
Or buy us a cup of coffee or tea on Ko-Fi!
