For years, I've been fascinated with the Steam icon for The Little Acre, with its vaguely Bluthian doggo and moppet staring at some unseen treasure, and I'd occasionally spot it whenever a Steam sale rolled around at some ridiculous discount. It belongs to my beloved old-school point-and-click adventure genre and seemed well-received enough, so I decided to slake my curiosity a few months back. The Little Acre is the product of an Irish developer, Pewter Studio, marking only the second time I've tried an Indie from the Emerald Isle (after Gambrinous's Guild of Dungeoneering, though I should probably count VVVVVV designer Terry Cavanagh also). However, The Little Acre's Gaelic roots become immediately obvious with the game's full voice-acting, which features many a brogue, and the pastoral charms of the titular cottage setting.
The Little Acre follows both Aidan, a widower looking for work to support his rambunctious daughter as well as looking for his missing wayward inventor father Arthur in the meantime, and said rambunctious daughter Lily, a would-be adventurer who has courage and imagination to spare. Poking through Arthur's old workshop, both Aidan and Lily are separately teleported to a fantasy world named Clonfira which changes their proportions and presents all sorts of magical dangers. The game tends to alternate between the two playable characters fairly regularly, sometimes in a manner of seconds depending on the story's pacing at that moment, and generally finds ways to limit the usual inventory puzzles this genre is known for. A lot of the time, with the exception of scenes set at the Little Acre, you don't even need to leave the current screen to complete the immediate puzzle and move the story forward. There's also a few puzzles of the other, brainteasery kind, but they're simple enough. Intended for a younger audience, the game also has a generous hint system, though there are a few puzzles that rely on quick timing; usually of the old "temporarily distract someone while you complete an objective behind their back" sort. I noticed a lot of the secret achievements tend to involve completing these timing puzzles on the first attempt.
There's no getting around the elephant in the room, which is the game's duration: as well as animated like a movie (really, it's some great work, especially with Dougal the dog and his attempts to keep Lily from harm) it's about the length of one too. There's a speedrun achievement to complete it in an hour, which isn't beyond the realm of possibility even on your first playthrough. The ending is abrupt, but earned at least, and ends in a way that leaves room for sequels without necessarily demanding one (it's implied that the original denizens of Clonfira found pathways to lots of worlds, not just our own). Overall, I think there's a commendable level of craft behind the visuals and the voice-acting is adequate, and I particularly liked that the interface already highlights hotspots in the vicinity when you first load an area and removes them once they've served their purpose. It did glitch a few times, where I'll occasionally be unable to reach the save menu (I think it still auto-saves, and it's only an hour long even if it doesn't) or the subtitles will vanish or I'll try to activate two hotspots at once and confuse the game for a moment, but nothing that really stands out as too deleterious. Just a wholesome little fairytale of a graphic adventure game that frequently feels like the prologue of a grander story.
Rating: 4 out of 5.
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