izigame.me

Bought this during the Steam Summer Sale while I had some extra money in my wallet laying around, so I didn't necessarily spend much on it. I think it was worth it, honestly, but I do wish there was more to this game. I'm going to talk a little bit about my pros and cons, but all-in-all I'd say this game is worth your money if you enjoy farming + building simulators like Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing, Minecraft, etc. You can at least play for about a week before you get bored, or try it and refund it after enjoying it for an hour or so (however long the refund timer is I forgot).
TLDR Here's some basic things to look forward to or avoid before you buy! If you want more information I have more long-winded paragraphs below this list.
- Time passes with activities, such as chopping wood or mining, rather than actual time spent. There is a progress bar at the top, it'll get darker, and your character will say something like "I should go to bed!" when the bar is full.
- Relationships are simple to obtain but do not change much. Dating is easy, marriage is hard (if you're broke). Dialogue is limited but villagers do have different personalities and unique lines.
- The mine and the forest are separate instances that are randomly generated rooms with enemies. As far as I know you cannot fight these enemies but I might not have progressed enough to do so. Sometimes there are villagers or others that spawn here, villagers to collect them and others to give you loot. You can also get rocks and trees in your town but this is the main way to get these materials. There are also lakes in both instances where you can fish (and catch bugs), but there are also fish (and bugs) in your town.
- The other instances are also through the balloon and are unlocked as you upgrade the balloon. The city is where you buy animals and pastures. You do not need pastures for animals but they hang out in random places if you don't have one. The coins you collect in your town can be used here to gamble for random materials. There's also a blacksmith area where you can craft some rare items with rare materials (which aren't actually that rare, unless I got lucky). I haven't done much with the library so I can't speak about it, but you can read lore there and there's a weird tree I haven't interacted with lol.
- Villagers are quick to add to your town and do not require much effort. They do not get unhappy, you can fulfill their requests or you can decorate their homes to your desire, but they have a list of things they want.
- Building is mostly free with materials. You can design your town from the ground-up on the first day, and simply add/move everything when you get new things. When you destroy something you get the material you used back, and you can move anything including bugs and fish.
- The story is decent, nothing crazy but it makes you want to learn and see more about the world and the characters. It lasts a long time though and I'm unsure if it has an ending (there are a lot of cutscenes).
I love farming simulator games, but Stardew Valley has always been above others for me due to the amount of things to do in the game and the way to complete them. There is a clear goal to complete the Community Center, similar to the Museum in Animal Crossing, but Animal Crossing requires you to turn back / go forward in time to progress -- rather than just sleeping, and requires a lot more commitment to make Bells from what I remember. Littlewood has a Museum like Animal Crossing AND the ability to sleep like Stardew Valley! Immediately I appreciated that time passes by doing things rather than time itself, so I don't have to rush through the day or wait around for night time. This was the main pro of Littlewood that got me hooked for days playing hours at a time. I also love the freedom of building. Whenever I play Minecraft I'm typically building, especially in Creative Mode, so that was right up my alley too. As for making money, it's somewhere between easy and difficult. You spend a lot on upgrading everything, but you also get a lot every day, so if you're smart with using it on the things you want the most you won't run out.
My only concern for Littlewood, and the reason I have stopped playing, is the lack of things to do. Despite how quickly the day goes by, I feel like all I do is chop wood and break rocks and go to bed.
Apparently you can date more than one villager at a time, so that gave me something to strive for when I ran out of dates for one villager. I'm around level 60 with Ash and I was planning on making that the only one, but then I found out I was stuck until I bought a ring for a lot of currency that I didn't have. (Wedding rings are expensive though so I get that!) From what I recall we went on 3 dates and I complimented them every day, but I did some research to find out how to advance the relationship further and turns out I can't. While in other games relationships take a while to build, you can probably woo one person completely in a few hours. Based on what I've seen just from dating, I'm assuming marriage isn't much different of an experience, but I have not tried and I don't plan on grinding out enough for that ring when I still don't have everything upgraded.
As for the other things to do, there isn't much really. Every day I gather my rewards from the marketplace and place new things there to sell for the next day (daily currency income). Specific days of the week allow you to do different things, such as upgrade spawn rates by small percentages or allow more things to be placed in your town. There are special events or holidays, but they go by quickly and they don't really have much to them. I used to talk to villagers every day but I got more and more visitors and there are too many people to talk to now. I unlocked all the areas except the last one at the bottom that I can't get to yet, but I don't have much to do otherwise so I don't think I'll ever find out what that is.
There is a story, and it's honestly a decent one. Though I don't know how to trigger events. As I've been playing I've been getting story-related cutscenes, while other cutscenes are funny interactions between villagers. I enjoyed both variations of cutscenes but I wish I saw more of the story before I got bored.
I'm sad to say that I didn't play as much Littlewood as I thought I would. I got really hooked on it for a week or two but I ran out of things to do while waiting for the story to progress so I decided to stop playing. If there's a free update I might play again!