Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.
When I first heard about The Little Acre I really didn't expect much from it. A point and click game that seemed quite linear and with a sparse amount of exploration my expectations dropped even lower. But as played through the game I found myself falling for its charms.
The Little Acre by Pewter Games Studios is their first foray on the Xbox One and it's quite a triumph. Playing as Aidan who lives in the Irish countryside with his daughter and dog. Aidan lives a pretty mundane life until he discovers a portal that his father created shortly before he disappeared. As we all know, portals lead to different dimensions and this portal leads Aidan into a cartoon dimension. When you enter this dimension the game switches to a vibrant and quite mesmeric cartoon variation of the world you were just in and what makes this new dimension even more wonderful is the characters even know how different the new world looks.
The Little Acre gameplay mechanic is as you would expect from a point and click game pretty standard stuff and if you've ever played anything in this genre before you'll find your way around very quickly. The game itself won't take up to much of your time and it can be completed in just over a couple of hours. None of the child friendly puzzles are to taxing but if you do find yourself stuck there are hints that you can use to help you out.
Everything in The Little Acre is hand drawn and it looks beautiful. The animation is superb and has a nostalgia Disney kind of feeling to it. You can clearly see that the developers have put a lot of time and effort into the look of The Little Acre. When you consider that every single thing you see on screen is hand drawn it just adds a whole other level of admiration for what is a small team of developers. Every single frame of animation has been drawn by hand and that kind of dedication deserves to be applauded.
As cutesy as the game looks it's not shy in tackling some serious issues. I won't go into spoiler territory here but at one-point I was concerned that the game was about to take a complete tonal shift but thankfully the game soon shifts it's way back into happy mode. As I've mentioned before The Little Acre is an incredibly short game at just over two hours long and it's price point of £9.99 reflects that. For me it's priced just a bit to high and I can't see gamers who are not fans of this genre shelling out that much money for something that's so short.
Overall, I'm glad I got the opportunity to play The Little Acre. The love and attention to detail is clear to see and it's obviously been a labour of love for Pewter Games Studios. My only issues are with the price point and the length of the game. If you're a fan of the point and click genre you'll find a lot to like here but I'd still recommend waiting for a while until the game drops down in price.
Developer: Pewter Games Studios
Publisher: Curve Digital
Website: The Little Acre
Twitter: @Pewter_Games / @CurveDigital
The Little Acre is available now for £8.83 in a flash sale
Review Code supplied by Premiere Comms