The Little Acre review - A pretty point-and-click adventure with a few issues
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iOS
| The Little Acre

The Little Acre is appropriately named for a number of reasons. It's a quaint game, it's a precious game, and it's a little game. Seriously, it's quite small.

Depending on how much you faff about the average play time ranges from an hour to just about two, but for its current price point that's not the worst deal on the market.

Point and tap

The Little Acre is told through two points of view. The first being the dad, Aiden (voiced by Brian Hanby, AKA Terroriser), and the second being his daughter, Lily (voiced by Kate Clavan).

Both stories are told in bits, one following the other in segments as Lily tries to find her dad, while Aiden searches for his dad who went missing not too long before.

The whole thing starts with a series of menial and innocent tasks as Aiden to get your clothes on and fix Lily up some breakfast. This goes awry, however, as you're accidentally transported to another place entirely.

Lily, being the adventurer that she is, notices her dad's disappearance and follows suit to find him, ending up transported away herself in the process.

The quality of the audio is excellent. Voice acting-wise, Hanby's tones fit in nicely with the 'dad feel', whilst Clavan does a nice job with her lines. Unfortunately there are times where things are a wee bit wooden, but that comes down to the stiff script rather than the actors themselves.

The soundtrack is probably the nicest part of the game, fitting each sequence pleasantly without making any sudden drops in volume or overpowering the scene.

Gameplay-wise it's pretty straight forward. The areas you can interact with are highlighted, so it's up to you to figure out what bits are worthwhile and how to solve certain puzzles. Thankfully, you can double-tap on a door to speed up the process of actually going through it.

Its animation is also a wonderful feature. With a nice, smooth transition between frames, the hand-drawn aesthetic gives the whole thing a rather charming feel.

Technical issues

As good as the animation is, it can't save the game from its one major flaw: crashing.

Sadly there'd been a couple of crashes whilst wandering around the first section of the game, but the biggest issue came about an hour in. After both Aiden and Lily end up in the 'other world' the game simply crashes and refuses to reload.

Hopefully it'll be easily fixed with a patch. Until then I can't really comment on the story, or on much in this second world as I've only seen the first few minutes of it.

Commenting on the game so far though, it does drag a little as is the curse and difficulty of a lot of point-and-click adventures. It's not so much the act of walking through things at an amble as much as how long it takes to backtrack if you've gone way, way wrong.

Its puzzles equally don't offer up much of a challenge, allowing you to just stumble upon the answer rather than really think about it more times than not.
Maybe another time

For now I can't give a fair judgement on the whole game. What I've seen of it in the first workable part has been charming, and it's clear to see how much effort has gone into the game.

There are times when it grows a little tedious and points where its dialogue is a little wooden, but it's a lovely adventure that's sweet and innocent.

Once the issue is resolved I'll feel more confident scoring it adequately. As it is now, it's unfair of me to slap a number on it when I know full well that I've not seen it all.

The Little Acre review - A pretty point-and-click adventure with a few issues

The Little Acre has a lot of charm, but due to a technical issue I've yet to experience the story
Score
Emily Sowden
Emily Sowden
Emily is Pocket Gamer's News Editor and writes about all kinds of game-related things. She needs coffee to function and begrudgingly loves her Switch more than she lets on.