Little Goody Two Shoes Review (hanshotfirst)
One of the most aesthetically stunning indie games to be released in recent years, Little Goody Two Shoes effortlessly blends up to half a dozen distinct artistic styles - 90s Japanese anime, classic RPG pixel art, pastel fairytale illustrations and even puppetry.
It is also a magnificent mozaic of disparate genres - horror puzzle, RPG, resource management, classic arcade-style minigames, and lesbian dating sim,
with each element meshing together to form a cohesive narrative structure that is incredibly effective in delivering the plot with gut-wrenching emotional impact.
The soundtrack is truly amazing as well, with more than 60 tracks ranging in atmosphere from heartwarmingly beautiful to deeply unsettling. My personal favorite would be 'Romantic Crepescule', which can only be described as a 'sunset in aural form'. The soundtrack also boasts 4 songs with Japanese lyrics, two of which were sung by Elise's VA, and the other two by Rozenmarine's VA. Their talent really manages to shine through!
The story is a richly illustrated, beautiful-yet-horrific fairy tale which features as its protagonist an ambitious 18-year-old lass named Elise, who lives in a 19th-century German village called Kieferberg.
A poverty-stricken orphan barely eking out a living as a lowly maid-of-all-work, Elise can only find solace in her three female friends (and potential love interests), plus a rather unfounded belief in her destiny of fame and fortune.
Everything changes, however, when Elise learns of a local legend about a certain entity that grants people their deepest desire in exchange for a terrible price.
Intrigued, Elise becomes increasingly ensnared in a dangerous web of greed and deceit, with paranormal disasters that may or may not be connected to her activities plaguing the townsfolk.
The player as Elise must brave various otherworldly horrors in order to realize her wishes, while building up a romantic relationship with the love interests,
earning her keep through menial odd jobs (represented by fun yet challenging minigames), and fending off accusations of witchcraft from the properly paranoid neighbors.
Thematically speaking, the plot is as richly diverse as the aesthetics, covering such topics as LGBTQ romance (though Elise ends up marrying a man in certain endings, it is not her first choice to say the least), the poignant decline of small towns (Kieferberg is a picturesque village that is nonetheless slowly losing people due to a lack of economic opportunities and essential services), the bleak despair of poverty and social isolation (well represented in-game, which fuels Elise's determination to risk everything for a better future, despite the apparent perils), the ugliness of mob psychology (which rears its head whenever Elise is accused of witchcraft - a perfect scapegoat due to her social status as a poor orphan in a tightly-knit hamlet), and last but not least, the fine line between legitimate desires and unethical greed. Is it inherently wrong to wish for more? What is the price that you are willing pay for wealth and status? These are the questions that will continue to haunt Elise and the player, well after the ending credits roll.
The romantic scenes are sweet and wholesome, with each love interest having a distinctive personality and a compelling backstory. Each of them has a different answer to Elise's unhealthy obsession with material wealth.
Rozenmarine is a downtrodden beggar girl of a non-Christian faith with a meek, fatalistic outlook on life due to various hardships, yet somehow she manages to find happiness even in her extremely deprived circumstances - an attitude Elise could possibly learn from.
Lebkuchen is Elise's dearest childhood friend and a nun-in-training at the local church, who serves as a pillar of their community through her selflessness and considerable moral authority. While her insistence upon putting the needs of the many before her own is slowly taking a toll on her, Lebkuchen persists due to a fundamental love for the community she belongs to, and the people who comprise it. After all, no individual is an island.
Freya is Elise's friendly rival and the town headsman Gustav's daughter. One of the most gregarious, eternally-optimistic personalities in the game, Freya is attracted to Elise for the simplest of reasons - her beauty, elegance and assertive personality. She doesn't overthink things, and loves her life for what it is, intending to achieve success through hard work and shrewd harnessing of her innate talents - unlike Elise, who wallows in an emotional cesspool of bitterness and frustration.
Elise can, depending on the player's choice, either embrace her lover's vision of a brighter future sans the satanic rituals, or persist in her dubious pursuit of easy riches and glory.
As for the other elements of this marvelous game, the dynamics of daily village life are well-constructed to the point that Kieferberg itself can be considered a separate character, and the horror puzzles are, in their own way, hauntingly beautiful. Horror is mostly psychological rather than visceral, with each step of Elise's ill-advised quest fueling a growing aura of dread and suspense.
All of this eventually culminates in a denouement that can be either triumphantly cathartic or heart-wrenchingly tragic, with lasting consequences for Elise and her loved ones.
While the game admittedly has many flaws, it is a miracle in itself that a team of a dozen developers or so managed to create such a delightful work of art on such a minuscule budget.
I really do hope that Astral Shift receives the acclamation that it so badly deserves. Wishing you guys only the best of luck!!