A while back I was on the hunt for games that were similar to Stardew Valley, after playing the absolute hell out of that game for... a good 737 hours according to Steam.
During that search I discovered a game called Littlewood, but unfortunately it was in Early Access and, after a lot of burns, I no longer bother with Early Access titles unless a particular title seems absolutely fantastic. Like Grounded for instance. I'll be getting that soon even though it's in Early Access, but it's also by Obsidian so it can't be too bad, right? Guess we'll soon find out. I'll be playing it in multiplayer anyway, so if it's disappointing at least I'll have someone to commiserate with.
Anyway.
Welcome to Littlewood! We are the hero who defeated the great evil and made the land safe once more. But, we have also lost all of our memories so we have no idea about what's happened, who any people are, or anything really.
But wait, we're getting ahead of ourselves.
First let's... make us a person!
I am Kaelci, a sassy pixel character with ruby red locks and some green Robin Hood attire. As all good adventurers tend to wear. And once I submit my choices, I awaken in a very, very empty wooden house.
Walking out the front door I am greeted by an old friend who I don't remember, and she quickly brings me up to speed. I defeated a great evil, the land is safe to live on again, and it's time to settle down and make a home. Actually, an entire town.
The place is a shambles.
There is one empty house, broken fences, ratty dirt paths all over the show. Weeds everywhere.
Unaware of the great person she is and happy to simply take on the mantle of hero, our sassy pixel-lady agrees with this girl who claims she's her best friend and gets to work tidying up the area for our new town.
Things are starting to look nicer already!
With our building tool, we're able to relocate everything to where we want them to be. I've uprooted and arranged a bunch of trees, built two more houses, and have begun tidying up the paths.
The time-flow in this game is pretty good. Time only passes when you actually do stuff, unlike other similar games. So chop a tree down, a bit of time passes; do some crafting, some time passes; mine rocks, time passes; stand in the spot doing nothing, no time passes; rearrange the town and decorate, no time passes.
I like it.
End of Day 2! Things are starting to fill out nicely! 😄
Admittedly, at this particular stage of the game I was a bit iffy. Yep, I'm making a town. Okay. That's great and all but... what else do we do? Some reviews in the comments were declaring this game to be better than Stardew Valley and at Day 2 I was yet to see where such high praise came from.
Still am yet to see it, but, onward.
So there's a relationship system in the game. We can talk to people, compliment them if you so desire, and get them to follow you around the place.
It's rather handy actually, getting them to follow you, as while you're out and about doing stuff they find stuff too -- hooray, extra stuff!
Apparently if you compliment someone enough, you can at last flirt with them too! OooooOOooOoooh.
It will be interesting to see how the relationship system plays out, as it's one of my favourite parts of these types of games. Because I'm apparently a love-starved freak, haha. 😆
This is where I'm up to at the moment with my burgeoning town. It's Day 15 of Spring, we have our first event -- Farmer's Day -- where farming gets double experience and there are some new seeds available at the village square.
You can also see that my town is beginning to look much, much nicer than it did in the first image. I like where it's going!
To the left of the above image you can see a hot air balloon. This is how we travel! 😄
As we progress, we shall have more places to visit apparently, so sayeth the question marks, but, still early in the game at the moment.
But, most importantly, we can leave this little town! Creating a town and furnishing everyone's houses is great and all, but we need some variety to spice things up. Now we can go to a forest and a cave and start gathering more resources in which we shall use to expand our sweet little Littlewood.
A cave, and a shop! Two of the cave entrances are barred until my mining has levelled up a bit.
Inside the cave is random every day, but there are rocks galore, treasure chests, fishing ponds, among other things for you to gather... and there are monsters! Which I don't have a sword to defeat...
Seems a bit silly, really. I am a great hero who defeated the evilest wizard in all the land! But I don't have a sword. Or a magic wand. Or anything.
Maybe I'll get a weapon later? 🤷♀
I'm enjoying the game despite my initial reservations about it just being some sort of pixel town builder. I mean, it is. This is what we're doing. We're building a town. But it's growing on me the more I play.
I just can't fathom the comments that declare this to be better than Stardew Valley.
So far it seems like a cute, addictive little game in its own right, but I don't think I would be comparing it to Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley, or any other Farming life-sims.
I can see myself playing it for a week or two, that's for sure, and it does look as though it has some replayability which is always nice. At the moment, though, I'm reserved. Probably because my expectations were too high.
Will do another write-up when I've progressed further and see how I feel at that stage. 😊
All screenshots in this post are courtesy of me, 
