Little Goody Two Shoes Review: Nostalgia At Its Finest
The ’90s were 30 years ago. Just thought you’d want to hear that, because if I have to live with that harrowing reminder, so do you. It was a standout era, and I can think of nothing more striking than ’90s anime and Japanese games. Little Goody Two Shoes shows no limits in how far it’ll go to emulate this striking and flavorful art style, and to its credit, it nails it. The pointed noses, giant eyes, and a washed-out color scheme really evoke those early ’90s shoujo anime. As a game, though, it reminds me of how unforgiving the games from that era were. Make no mistake, Little Goody Two Shoes is absolutely the nostalgic fever dream of the ’90s I wanted it to be, and it was plenty of fun to romp around in, but I’ll be the first to admit that it’s a bit ruthless at times.
Bewitching Tales
You know things are getting real when the 4:3 aspect ratio comes out.
So there’s a bit of history to Little Goody Two Shoes in that it’s set in the same universe as AstralShift’s other indie horror gem, Pocket Mirror, acting as a prequel to it. If you haven’t played Pocket Mirror, don’t worry. You can still play this as a perfectly fine standalone, but people who have played Pocket Mirror will probably recognize more than a couple of familiar things playing through Little Goody Two Shoes.
You play as Elise, the newfound owner of her grandmother’s home after she passed away. One night, after coming home from the nearby town of Kieferberg, her house seems to have been broken into, and upon investigating the house’s nearby granary, she finds a young girl in a tattered dress who regrets ever coming that way after promptly getting bopped with a broom by Elise. Elise makes up with the wayward traveler, who soon seems to have much more to do with Elise than she thinks. Hosting this newcomer has its own set of issues, as the townsfolk are a very suspicious bunch and scared to hell and back that a witch might be among them when strange things start happening throughout the town. It sure paints Elise and her mysterious newcomer in a not-so-favorable light, and Elise will have to keep her lies straight to keep the townsfolk from getting antagonistic.
Admittedly, the plot at hand here reads something like a mix between a story from the Salem Witch Trials and a German or Austrian folktale, and a lot of these little nuggets of story all come with their own in-game mechanics. You have a Suspicion Meter that, if maxed out, ensures you’ll be burning on the cross. You can lower this a few different ways, like choosing certain dialogue options or feeding the local gossip-hungry glutton to keep her from spreading rumors. One of Little Goody Two Shoes’ major elements is a relationship system, where you can go on dates with a trio of people: Rozenmarine, Freya, and Lebkuchen. The relationship system is vital to the plot, so you better pick your best girl quickly so you can maximize how many dates you can net with them. There are up to 10 endings, not including ones where you die from losing all your HP or starve to death.
Before going any further here, I must stress that Little Goody Two Shoes‘ art style is to die for. I adore the sharp, true-to-its-roots ’90s anime style that hits hard and heavy on the nostalgia factor. There are a few of these little anime music videos that pop up that are not only eye-catching as hell and super fluid but have a plethora of little details to pick up on, like the well-added VHS static lines down at the bottoms and tops. Though I said earlier, the art style reminds me a lot of ’90s shoujo anime like Magic Knight Rayearth, it also reminds me a bit of The Vision of Escaflowne when the pointy noses are in full view. The environmental artwork is no slouch either, making great use of the hand-drawn style while still incorporating a clever use of foreground and background objects to give off that 3D element. If there’s anything I love just as much as the style, though, it’s the music. It’s a cocktail of classical countryside instruments and cute girls chanting and singing, reminding me heavily of games like Ar Tonelico or Atelier in tone and style.
A Humble Life
Wooden arcade cabinets are great until termites get involved.
The humble life in Kieferburg shines best with the people wandering it. A lot of the townsfolk might be a bit of a struggle to remember, as there are quite a few right off the bat, but they’re very succinct in their personalities, and after a few days, you’ll know who’s a friend, and who’s a foe. For example, you have Old Jochen, who’s dead-set on convincing everyone that there’s a witch amongst them, down to blaming rain on them. Yes, even rain. Another more prevalent townsfolk is the cool-headed, burly man Gustav, doing his best work trying to keep peace and order where he can when he isn’t caring for Freya. Sure, all of them can come off as a bit one-note. Still, it works more as a pro than a con, as there are many opportunities where you see these simple personalities interact, whether they’re grouping up in their normal cliques or clashing with each other in larger meetings. It gets especially interesting when the mass panic starts, and even more so when all eyes point at Elise for one reason or another.
That said, there’s undoubtedly more to the town than just its people. It’s a full-blown town, and Kieferberg has a decent amount of things you can do. Each day in Little Goody Two Shoes is divided into six segments: Dawn, Morning, Afternoon, Dusk, Night, and the Witching Hour. When you wake up at dawn, you usually spend that time getting caught up with story beats before moving on to the morning segment. Morning, afternoon, and evening are all hours that you can perform time-sensitive tasks like working for money or going on dates. Whenever you pass to another segment, you’ll consume one of your five bread loaves underneath your health bar. You have to pay very close attention to this number; there’s no protection or warning if you leave it too low and try to do something that’ll advance time, meaning you absolutely will keel over after whatever time-consuming thing you’re doing if that number hits zero when you’re done. While this sounds arduous, it is only for the first two days when you’re still working up money and getting into the swing of knowing when to feed yourself. Still, save often, and use multiple save files if needed. This might not sit well with some, and there are other little things like having to go into your menu to use items and only being able to save at specific points that might not gel well with players, so let this be your early warning.
Before we move on to the night stuff, the jobs you can do during the day are very much worth bringing up, as pivotal as they are. The jobs you can do around town are really adorable little pixel art minigames you play that even look like they’re being played on a gilded, ye-old arcade cabinet. They’re relatively harmless little games like moving Elise left and right to catch apples or chopping wood while kicking away anything that doesn’t deserve the axe. You’ll be graded based on your performance, and while it might seem tricky at first, it takes little time to get the hang of them. I started being able to reliably pull A and S ranks by the third day, and the money you earn is crucial to the late-night activities.
Night in the Woods
When the sun goes down, the world changes quite a bit, and we get into the adventuring side of Elise’s story. Every night during the Witching Hour, you’ll make a trip into the deep woods on a mission to have your wish granted by Him. Who’s Him? You’ll find out following the woods deeper and deeper, procuring three Testaments to prove your devotion to your sacred wish of getting loaded as hell with fortune and fame so you can leave your humble hometown. The problem is, these woods don’t take too kindly to strangers, even when they’re invited.
These sections act as exploration areas, but all have dangers you’ll need to keep an eye out for. For example, one trip into the deep woods will have you frequently dealing with wheat fields where demonic horse-skeleton things will charge in a straight line from certain wheat patches. A later trip has a floor of dark liquid that hosts ghostly creatures that only attack if you aren’t on dry, stable land.
On paper, much of this works just fine, and I enjoyed the exploration factor. But when it stopped being fun, it really stopped being fun. There were moments when the horror and tension were replaced with confusion and annoyance. It mainly stems from some annoying enemies and a few areas lacking clarity—for example, the aforementioned ghostly creatures. When you first get introduced to these things, they seem easy to understand. If it spots you, it chases you down, hits you, then you get teleported to the solid ground you’ve touched last. Where this sucks particularly bad is in the first area you meet them because there are three of them wandering around, about 85% of the ground is water, it’s dark, and the field of view is so damn narrow that, by the time you’ve heard one lock on to you, there’s no running, and you sure as hell can’t see them coming because you can hardly see ahead of you. I had to step away from that one for a bit; it was far more frustrating than it needed to be. It’s so odd, too, because later areas aren’t as bad about that, but that section was brutal for no reason; even just limiting to one of those bastards would’ve been enough to hone in difficulty without causing frustration.
There’s a good amount of puzzles scattered around the areas you’ll be exploring during the Witching Hour, and while far less troublesome than some of the creatures lurking in the woods, they can require a bit of mental gymnastics to piece together. There’s a heavy focus on visual identification. You really gotta keep an eye on the environment. If you see a bunch of things shaking, it’s almost a given that you’ll be looking for whichever of those things isn’t shaking. If a clue even so much as mentions light, you’re going to be going through a few lantern matches playing trial-and-error. I’ll admit, I do rather like the puzzles here, even if a few of them frustrated me from lack of understanding, but looking back on them, there are enough context clues that you can figure out what you need to do. That said, there are a few that just don’t really feel like they’re necessary. The “puzzle” in one of the lagoons in a later visit to the woods pretty much has you wandering a needlessly large, very dark area in search of three spots you interact with, and that’s it. There are some riddles, but the riddles aren’t tricky to figure out; it’s the wandering for several minutes in the dark that ended up with me just wasting about half an hour of my time.
The Best Damn ’90s VHS Fever Dream You’ll Ever Play
I’ll be entirely honest here: Little Goody Two Shoes’ striking art style alone could sell the game. The ’90s anime stylings are superbly recreated here, feeling like a fever dream of an anime VHS tape you watched way back when. The four main maidens of this tale are well-spun and memorable, and even the more minor side characters all have their points of interest, helping tie together the short but sweet adventure all the better. Just be careful wandering the woods, as some pretty irksome creatures and a couple of time-consuming trots are out that way, but if you have the heart to brave this witchy tale, you’ll find Little Goody Two Shoes to be quite worth the woodland walk.
Final Verdict 4/5
Available on: Steam (Reviewed), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch; Publisher: Square Enix; Developer: AstralShift; Number of Players: 1; Released: October 31st, 2023; MSRP: $19.99
Full disclosure: A copy of Little Goody Two Shoes was provided by the publisher.
