Wishes can be unforgiving, if you think about it. Always in the back of one’s mind, never relenting and either being the driving force for a person or potentially their doom. For the almost Little Red Riding Hood-lookalike Elise, her wish to leave the dull little town she grew up in is always at the forefront of her mind. And when it looks like she might just her wish—a fated meeting and a cute pair of shoes just sitting in the back—things start getting a little weird.
Developed by AstralShift and published by SQUARE ENIX Collective, Little Goody Two Shoes is a horror-themed adventure slash life sim game where players take on the role of Elise as she leads a strange week leading up to her hometown Kieferberg’s big yearly celebrations. Every action counts, so you’ll need to read this read this review with vigilance: you might find yourself getting sucked into a fantastic creepy fairy tale yourself.
It’s Always the Shoes
In Little Goody Two Shoes, you are always on the clock. Elise, our upstanding but sassy woodland neighbour of Kieferberg, helps her neighbours out so she can quite literally chase “that bread”. Yes, besides her health bar, Elise has a number of bars tied to her overall health such as hunger, sanity, and a “witch” suspicion meter. Days are split up into roughly six periods, and every passing period consumes one piece of hunger. Sanity dictates just how many apparitions Elise can meet before going kookoo and the suspicion meter acts as a driving force for you to say the right things and pay off the right person. Oh, and of course, pursuing romantic relationships with the game’s three maidens.
These systems go hand-in-hand and encourage you to explore Kieferberg to its fullest. It’s a good idea to explore the overworld every period to make sure you don’t miss anything (and even lock yourself out of one of the game’s ten endings). Doing people’s chores gets you funding, and that’s done through little fun minigames like egg and apply harvesting or ‘Kiss the Rat’. Every bit of monies you can find is super helpful because you’ll need quite a few recovery items as you navigate the game’s ‘witching hour’, a series of adventure sections that will test your wits and sanity so that Elise can get one step closer to realising her dream of potentially gluttony.
I mention witchcraft and that’s a fairly big aspect of the game and especially its narrative. See, over the course of the week, strange things begin happening to the town and its people—and it doesn’t take long for witchcraft to begin crying through the town. You’ll make dialogue choices that can impact what the townspeople think of a young lass like you—so mind your sharp tongue lest you end up as very good firewood. Save often—and you didn’t hear it from me, but those first two days are very important.
Uniquely Creepy
Little Goody Two Shoes takes a lot of inspiration from 80s and 90s anime, though personally it reminds me of the likes of Pretty Sammy. From the character designs to the style and framing of the cutscenes, developer AstralShift absolutely nailed this aspect of Little Goody Two Shoes, and that’s also what likely drew you to this review. Even its narrative and backdrop pulled some nice memories of Remi, Flander’s Dog, and Candy Candy for me. The game’s score only adds to the charm.
The story does a good job of presenting and developing its cast, whether its through dialogue or very sudden bursts of song and dance through some very cool cutscenes. The voice acting is a nice touch, though I ultimately turned it off not because of direction but becaus hearing “for goodness sake” and “Rozenmarie!” dozens of times left head spinning a bit after a while.
Now I haven’t touched much on the game’s horror aspects and honestly, that’s for good reason. It isn’t scary and I say this as someone who has screamed in shock while playing Minecraft. I do think that Little Goody Two Shoes’ horror backdrop adds more intrigue to Elsie’s situation: What’s in this forest? Who is calling to us? Why did these shoes suddenly appear? And for what its worth, seeing Elsie get beheaded with effects straight out of the 70s is pretty neat if it weren’t so sad.
Speaking of which, you’ll die quite a few times during the witching hour sections. These sections are short, trial-and-error sequences that’ll test your ability to scavenge and not get hit. Honestly, these sections were not my favourite. They’re not difficult and the game provides plenty of extra material and save points to progress, and some of the puzzles were even fun. But scrounging through darkness and some tight corridors with the analog stick (the D-pad cannot be used for movement) left me feeling a little miffed at times.
With gorgeous visuals and strong life sim mechanics, Little Goody Two Shoes is a phenomenal adventure game with the perfect creepy backdrop of a disturbed fairy tale. Do yourself a favour and pick this one up, you won’t regret it. ∎
Little Goody Two Shoes
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- Drop-dead gorgeous presentation.
- Life sim mechanics and time-based gameplay work hand-in-hand.
- Fun minigames.
- Well-paced narrative with plenty of consequence to watch for.
Start the discussion at forum.xboxera.com