The Little Acre Review – A Short but Charming Tale of Adventure

The Little Acre Review

Released on Xbox Live, PSN, and on Steam, The Little Acre brings together a classic style of point-and-click adventure gaming with a charming story of a family caught between two worlds, it’s just a shame the experience doesn’t last longer than it actually is.

The Little Acre follows the story of Lily and her father Aidan who live in a quiet rural cottage with Lily’s eccentric inventor grandfather Arthur. One day, Arthur goes missing and through a series of unfortunate events, Aidan and Lily get caught up in the mystery of a strange parallel fantasy world.

The Little Acre’s biggest strength is the beautiful art style. Pewter Games has clearly put a lot of thought into the visual design of the world and there are intricate details throughout every panel. It’s a gorgeously hand-drawn world that oozes character at every turn. From the perfectly rendered countryside to the mysterious alternate dimension, the color palate is vibrant and every panel is enjoyable to play through.

When it comes to gameplay, The Little Acre does well in the sense that most, if not all puzzles, have a common sense solution and are not unnecessarily complex or convoluted. However, that also means there is little challenge when it comes to puzzle solving; on the one hand, it means the game is never slowed down through frustrating puzzles or roadblocks, but it also means there isn’t much brain power required to burn through the puzzle solutions and the whole experience will be over well before it should be.

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“At a run time of maybe three hours, The Little Acre feels like it has a much broader story to tell and much larger worlds to explore.”

And that is the biggest problem with The Little Acre. Not the gameplay, or the visual design, or the excellent voice work, but the length of the experience. At a run time of maybe three hours, The Little Acre feels like it has a much broader story to tell and much larger worlds to explore. Very little time is spent exploring either vistas which feels like a lost opportunity. There’s a very small cast of characters that could be widened by a significant margin and the game only starts to draw you in when it starts wrapping up.

The Little Acre is a loveable game, with beautiful visuals and strong character and voice acting. It should be on the radar for anyone that enjoys classic point-and-click adventure games in the vein of King’s Quest or the more recent Broken Age, but should also come with the warning that this is more of a short story ripe with potential for further storytelling.

*** PS4 code provided by the publisher ***