Littlewood is a fun little time waster that works perfectly on the Steam Deck. It’s a simple resource gathering and crafting game where you get resources, turn them into materials and build a village. There is no combat, time limit or any other type of stressful component. The more you advance in the story the more villagers will come to your village - all with their own demands and cute little story lines. Don’t expect much depth or some crazy writing out of this, but it is a very laid-back and chill experience that works both in small bursts or longer sessions. The main story can be completed in around 15 hours, but going for 100% completion and villager satisfaction will take a lot longer. The presentation is cute with its reduced and colorful pixel art style and relaxed music and sound effects. The best thing about this game is the fully terraformable village. You can not only place buildings, vegetation and decorations to your liking but also put streets, paths, mountains, rivers, ponds wherever you like without restrictions. Changing things up is easily achievable without wasting precious resources or materials. So, if you are a creative person, you can really dive deep into creating your ultimate fantasy town. Or just appreciate the many amazing creations in the Steam Community.

This one is a huge step up from the first game in the story and dialogue department. I enjoyed it much more and actually finished it. I am still not 100% sold on the series. I can see why people love it so much, because it‘s a min/max-players dream come true. There are so many crazy things you can do and try to break the game balance. It's certainly an El Dorado for creative players who love to optimize their parties to the max. Unfortunately I am not that kind of gamer. I usually enjoy deep characters and battle systems, but it can get frustrating here if you are not 100% into the systems because of some insane difficulty spikes or just plain unfair encounter designs.

So I decided to play on easy, which was the right choice and made the game much more enjoyable for me. To be honest, I don‘t like the rather slow turn-based-battle-system with the constant status changes and physics that much. It can be confusing and unclear what happened and the controls and camera can get a bit fiddly. Another problem is that the last act really falls apart. Quest lines become super-unclear and there are some overly hard and frustrating battles. I also don‘t like how the game is divided into acts and how you can‘t go back to former acts and areas. Missed some quests on that island? Well, that‘s your problem. And they really need to overwork the user interface. The inventory system is a huge mess. Nevertheless I enjoyed my time with the game. Especially the first half of the game is great.

An overlooked gem of the Retro-Metroidvania craze. The presentation of the game is just sublime, offering a unique and highly stylish ride through crazy 16-bit vistas with an amazing synthwave soundtrack. The attention to detail is often staggering and rarely matched by other games. While the gameplay is nothing outstanding or snappy, it is fun from beginning to end and avoids overly hard difficulty spikes like many other games in the genre. This is mostly a relaxed, sometimes slightly challenging 5-7 hours escapism with a pretty decent story attached to it. There isn’t much replay value or innovation to be found but still highly recommended.