Main Game
My Little Shop concerns a newcomer, "Boy" or "Girl" (named by the player) to Clover Town. Your parents have unexpectedly left you with your grandparents, and you will grow crops and raise animals to make the townspeople happy and bring back the Harvest Sprites.
Farming is vastly simplified from other Harvest Moon games; the focus here is on remote-waggling mini-games. These are reminiscent of the Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop series of games, in that a series of customers will come in to the various stores (Juice Bar, Ice Cream Stand, Egg Decoration Stand) and ask for that store's product. The player can make money at the stands and purchase additional fields (the game opens with only two) to grow more crops and house livestock.
Progression
Initially, you grow only tomatoes for the juice bar. Juices are made in a two-step process: an initial light-gun game to select the requested crop as it rolls past on carts (get only the correct ingredient(s), and watch out for fakes!), then a waggle-enough-but-not-too-much blender mini-game. Make your customers happy to make money, then buy two additional shops: Egg Decorating Stand and Ice Cream Stand. You can also take your spoils to the tool shop, where you can purchase additional food preparation tools, such as the Juice Bar's ice machine (a 3-card monte game with different types of ice cubes) and vegetable slicer (a slash-the-falling-object timing game); the Ice Cream Stand's milk smoother (catch the drops in your bucket without it over-filling) and topping machine (a variant of the shoot-the-ingredients-off-the-cart game); and the Egg Decoration Stand's egg boiler (the egg moves left-to-right through a maze, the player guides it up and down by twisting the Wii remote to raise and lower the boiler's temperature) and egg roller (tilt the Wii remote on 2-axis to roll your egg through the maze and out the goal). All of these additions give more opportunities for bonus points, and therefore, more money.
Not only does the food prep get more sophisticated, the ingredients also follow the familiar progression from Good to Great to Super; and offer more variety: start with tomatoes, turnips, carrots, pumpkins, bananas, strawberries, even buy watermelons in a DLC package for a bonus in both points and money. Animals for the Ice Cream Stand and Egg Decorating Stand get more exotic too: the the familiar cow now has a friend in the Jersey Cow and Coffee Cow (and a Strawberry Cow in the 3rd DLC package), and the chickens and quail can be joined by turkeys in a DLC pack.
Repetition
The game progresses over days, based on the internal Wii calendar, and events will trigger from one day to the next. At the end of a play session, characters may tell the player they'll be by tomorrow. Crops must be watered and animals tended daily. The games may be played as many times as the player needs to play them for money, but this game is more about playing every day for a short period than playing all the way through in one sitting. Make the right people happy with the right product to awaken the Harvest Sprites and get all four of the clovers spinning on Clover Town's windmill.
DLC
Four packs are available so far, and can be seen from the in-game menu. Each is priced at 400 points. The first three include an additional animal or crop (Turkeys, Watermelons, and the Strawberry Cow), remodeling parts to decorate your shop, and an additional friend in the town. The fourth includes 5 friends, but no crops or animals.
The "Add-on Content" menu has 5 selectable lines, 4 of which are populated, and a scroll/progress bar on the right which is not yet active. As a quick reminder, the total of the game (1200 points) and all 4 add-on packs (400 points) is 2800 points, which is currently almost $30us.
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