The Little Acre (PC)
Every now and then I’ll find a game that feels like it would have been better off being a movie or television series, the game either not balancing its gameplay side well in a plot-heavy experience or simply feeling like a less interactive form of storytelling would benefit the creator’s vision. Usually this is a negative as it meant the game or story suffered because of the wrong choice of medium, but when it comes to The Little Acre, it manages to feel more like this is an animated film with light playable sections added throughout to give it a bit more energy.
The Little Acre is a split story that follows a family’s unusual intersection with a world of magic and monsters. The story starts in a humble little house in 1950s Scotland, the titular Little Acre being the home of Aidan, his daughter Lily, and their dog Dougal. Aidan’s father Arthur, an inventor and explorer of the unknown, disappeared a while before the story truly kicks off, and while Aidan seems content to try and live his life and raise his daughter as best he can at first, he stumbles into the secrets Arthur left around Little Acre. Soon, both Aidan and Lily end up using Arthur’s technology to enter a magical world with strange creatures, the goal immediately becoming not just to find a way home, but to find each other and the truth of what happened to Arthur during his travels.
The Little Acre’s plot isn’t making any particularly deep statements or really even exploring much of a theme beyond surface level ideas about the emotional connections between family members, but it certainly feels more in line with something you’re supposed to enjoy for the adventure and the odd things that arise during it. Being about two hours in length, it neatly fits into the runtime of a feature length animated film, and that similarity isn’t a mere coincidence. Much of the game features lovingly drawn hand animated characters and detailed backgrounds, and while the extra effort put into the settings doesn’t mean it can convincingly deceive someone who saw screenshots of the title into thinking it is a motion picture, the characters are animated with a good amount of personality and care. Lily has some nice bounce and exaggeration to her movements that give the young girl the vivaciousness to match her adventurous attitude, and while Aidan is more serious as the responsible adult, he has an appealing awkwardness to him that matches his more unwilling role in this dangerous journey.
A strange choice was made in having the real world give the characters more realistic proportions while the world of monsters has them reduced down to small, squat versions of themselves that the characters even acknowledge as alterations to their regular forms, but while the humans seem to have been reduced in size to possibly make them easier to animate, the creatures of the other realm have designs that sell this other world as a dangerous place with deadly foes to worry about. A creature swimming through the water ominously looms until it bursts out with its skinless skull face and unusually long blue tongue, but on the other hand, a cute caterpillar creature can be found as a companion for Lily who does a good job of standing in for Dougal after the dog is left behind. Dougal is given a surprising amount of personality even though he disappears into the background for quite a while, his reactions coming across perfectly without needing any verbal acknowledgement from the other players in this plain but beautifully drawn plot.
Since the story is mostly a sequence of actions without any greater narrative to explore or flesh out, the gameplay’s intersection with the story is able to do so snugly and without feeling like it’s breaking the flow. At different points in the plot you’ll control Aidan or Lily in point and click puzzle sections that rarely ask much of the player. The areas you explore are often rather limited in their scope and the items the characters carry are similarly restricted to a very small inventory where you can eventually puzzle out what you’re meant to do, and while the starting section in Little Acre is a bit wider in scope than most portions, even there you can either piece together what you’re meant to be doing based on the obvious areas of interest or use the hint system to get a push in the right direction. The voice acting is actually fairly well done for the two leads, Lily’s voice actress giving her character a good degree of childlike energy while Aidan is able to deliver his dry wit rather decently, but whether it’s the simpler jokes of Lily’s portion or Aidan’s cheeky observations, the humor never really stands out so much it becomes a selling point. It still can manage a few hits though thanks mostly to the animation’s good handle on slapstick and character expressiveness.
The Little Acre’s puzzles don’t often ask much of the player, only a few areas interactable despite the detailed screens you find across the adventure, and in some cases like creating platforms by alternating which lamps are turned on, it’s more of an inevitability you’ll figure things out than something that requires critical thinking to solve. There is, however, an unusual emphasis on puzzles that must be done during rather short windows of time. After activating an object or distracting a character, you might need to quickly perform an action, and while moving your mouse around to click on the right area sounds simple, sometimes you might need to pop open the inventory, grab the right item, and drag it to the correct spot in a short timeframe. There is no penalty for messing up, but repeatedly setting things up and then trying to perform the right action is certainly a little irritating, especially when the click regions of an object or character are rather small. It can be even more bothersome if you’re still puzzling out what the game wants of you after you’ve activated the temporary state change, but the limited amount of options make it so that eventually the timing will be right and you can progress.
Perhaps rather appropriately, the gameplay portions feel like they slot into the same spot as the story’s writing: decent for progressing things along but not particularly strong. The Little Acre has a lot of charm to its animation and small batch of characters, and even though some characters like the strange man-beast Merr in the other world with his memorable slow starts to sentences and Arthur’s assistant Nina would be much better players if any time was spent to really show who they are, The Little Acre’s concise family focus makes it feel like a short family film that won’t really have the staying power to return to again and again but still manages to entertain during your brief time spent with it. The hand drawn animation really feels like the game’s main appeal with everything else there to contextualize it, but that’s okay since those portions manage to be mildly entertaining in doing so.
THE VERDICT: The Little Acre’s animation is the root of its family-friendly charm, the simple characters and straightforward plot supported well because the game makes it all lovely to look at. The puzzle solving gameplay between story sections asks for just enough interaction from the player to justify its inclusion, and having the break from the story’s limited amount of narrative substance helps to make this brisk experience feel a bit more involved than if it was just an animated feature. The Little Acre feels like a lightly interactive animated film for the most part, the title not really standing out since the gameplay and plot are fairly surface level but the title having enough personality, quality animation, and decent puzzle solving to still be a fine way to spend the time between better examples of both animated films and point and click adventures.
And so, I give The Little Acre for PC…
An OKAY rating. Due to the limited need for intricate problem solving and the story that doesn’t ask for much from the audience besides paying attention to the string of events, The Little Acre feels like it might be a good fit for a parent to play with their child, both able to enjoy the detailed animation and the puzzles simple enough that the child can contribute their suggestions or the parents can push it along when it gets a little too difficult for the kid to suss out a solution. The timed elements during puzzles feel like they could have been more generous since having such short windows for the correct action feels like it adds nothing, and getting to know Merr and Nina beyond their story importance could make them as memorable as the leading characters, but The Little Acre is here to provide a little adventure and it does that well enough that it can entertain. The entertainment is fairly basic though and you can’t help but be left wondering how the animation team would be able to elevate an even more involved story or a game that makes better use of its interactive side, but there is at least a good balance between the appeal of the story scenes and the importance of taking some time to figure out one of the game’s puzzles with their appropriately limited interactive elements.
The main thing about The Little Acre is that, if you stripped out its gameplay side, it’s left feeling a little hollow and uneven. Much of the story is a simple adventure plot about entering a strange new world and trying to reconnect with your family after you’re split apart by circumstance, and the introduction of various perils proves to be the way the writers chose to spice up those portions between characters chatting about the situation. Making overcoming danger into interactive problem solving gives it more appeal than simply watching the character struggle to figure out how to progress or contend with a monstrous creature on their own, and while these could have been made much deeper in concept or execution to help The Little Acre stand stronger as a video game, they perform their role in keeping this experience even if not particularly exceptional. While The Little Acre does certainly evoke an animated family film, it still feels like it squarely belongs in the most interactive form of entertainment media, the simple adventure balancing out into something decent even though neither the plot or play is notable beyond their practical role in carrying the beautifully animated story along.