The Little Acre Review

Point and Click games are a very mixed bunch. Some really hit the spot with their stories and puzzles, while others feature absolutely contrived solutions that suck the fun out. The Little Acre is a charming, short and sweet game which offers a more than enjoyable time for those who decide to play it.

The game’s story mainly revolves around Aidan and his daughter Lily, who live together in their countryside house, The Little Acre. Aidan’s father also used to live with them, but disappeared without trace, leaving his family to wonder where he went. 

After days without notice or clues about his whereabouts, Aidan suddenly receives a package addressed to his father, containing a note from a coworker and a mysterious crystal. Tinkering around with the crystal and some machines his father left behind, Aidan manages to power his father’s workshop up, starting the actual adventure.

Every part of The Little Acre is beautifully hand drawn and animated, creating wonderful landscapes and sights. Although there are not many characters to meet in the game, all of them are unique from both writing and visual standpoints, which is more than welcome. 

The soundtrack and SFX are also nicely made, with plenty of different tracks spanning the whole game.  It is a very welcome surprise how The Little Acre features full voice acting in several languages, done pretty nicely for an indie title.

As far as point and click games go, this is not a particularly lengthy or hard one. Most puzzles are simple enough to solve, with a few things to interact with constrained to small areas. Even if someone were to get stuck, there are options to freely request tips and solutions, allowing anyone to play it.

There are a few issues here and there, such as a few sprites becoming blurry at times and certain moments where characters get stuck in loops, but these are minor and easy to solve. Besides this, another complaint that could be had is how the story leaves a slew of untied knots, without any shamble of resolution. While some of these unfinished elements of the story could be glossed over, there are a certain few which are harder to ignore, such as the issue at hand being fixed but none of the larger ones being. 

This plays directly into the aforementioned short length of the game, which can be beaten in less than an hour without even knowing the solutions. While it makes The Little Acre a short and sweet game to play for a while and possibly 100%, it somewhat subtracts from the fulfilment obtained.

I did quite enjoy my time with the game since it was quite a relaxing experience. That said, I do wish it had been longer and closed if not all, at least most of its plot points. At times it can feel like things are mentioned to pique the interest of the player to keep them hooked only for that particular line to go nowhere. 

Overall, The Little Acre is not a bad game by any means, but it isn’t a great one either. It stands in a mostly “fine” spot which makes it an entertaining play but not much more. At $/€12.99/£9.99, it is hard to justify its price for how little gameplay time it has to offer. That said, it does go quite cheap in sales, which are also frequent for it, making it a worthy purchase in one. Players looking for a challenging or funny game a la old Monkey Island games won’t find that here, but those looking for an entertaining time with a mostly wholesome story will.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary PC code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.