I have a weird connection to this series, my online presence has been tied to it's protagonist ever since I picked Ittle as my Minecraft skin seven years ago. I finally decided to play it and I'm pretty disappointed.

It's a perfectly fine game but is very rough around the edges, the puzzles are ok, but not that difficult and the combat is annoying and uninteresting. This game is absolutely carried by it's amazing hand-drawn art style and it's sense of humour. I enjoyed my time with the game but it's not what I suspected.

DISCLAIMER:
This review is entirely for my own sake. You are welcome to read it but it may or may not contain spoilers for the whole game.

Expected a short and silly zelda-like adventure game. Got a short and silly puzzle heavy game and I'm not complaining about it.
Item dungeons were fun, but felt confused by the existence of hard side paths/shortcuts.
Item interactions were very interesting, but felt confused because many puzzles could be broken with them.
Master cave was an awesome experience requiring all tools and a lot of thinking.
Loved the ultimate weapon and true ending acquired by smacking [REDACTED].
Then I decided to try doing the 2 item runs and that's when everything fell into place. The shortcuts made the dungeons shorter, yet still interesting on repeat playthroughs. Puzzles required actual solving with the lack of one of the main tools. The final bossfight adapting to your current arsenal was cool. Routing these runs was very fun.
I'm not too into speedrunning, but getting the 15 minute achievement is not too tight. I still didn't have much fun doing the 3 attempts it took me, though.

Overall, good puzzles and silly jokes all around. Very much recommend doing the 4 main runs.

Completed with 100% of achievements unlocked, which includes all collectibles. After discovering this game from a passing mention in the Steam thread, I knew that it looked like just the sort of game that I'd enjoy, being very much inspired by the puzzle elements of 2D Zelda (my favourite game series). While the puzzle mechanics that the game uses are more limited than those of Zelda, this allows each of them to be explored more deeply and there are a fair few really taxing puzzles here (I'll admit to resorting to a guide on a few occasions, especially for the 'Master Cave') - making for a very satisfying experience, with that "aha!" moment upon solving some of the more intricate rooms.

Ittle Dew originally got my attention not simply due to its cute visuals and tomboy protagonist, but because one look at it was enough to tell it was inspired by The Legend of Zelda. That's a high bar to set for oneself, and I've seen many games that claimed to be like Zelda, but fell short. Upon playing, though, I was delighted to see that Ittle Dew could, indeed, cash that check.

Zelda is a long-time favorite series of mine. Bar the first couple of games (and excluding BotW, which is a different beast), it's a series that's very light on combat mechanics, most of the challenge coming from using your equipment correctly to a) navigate environments and b) solve puzzles. The amount of (a) and (b) varies from game to game, from 2D to 3D, among other things, but in any case, it's that mix that had the series see success for decades. This deceptively simple formula, however, requires great level design to work, which is where a lot of copycats fall short.

As Ittle Dew starts, the eponymous adventurer Ittle Dew and her magic fox Tippsie shipwreck into a mysterious island wherein lies a castle. They start heading inland looking for a way off the island and soon meet Itan Carver, the item salesman. He promises to make them a raft in exchange for an artifact hidden within the castle, and so, our pair sets off to explore it.

The castle is the main dungeon for Ittle Dew, being both the first place you enter and the location of the final boss, however, it's impossible to explore it all in one go without extra equipment. There are three special items in the game: the Fire Sword, the Portal Wand and the Ice Wand, all of which are found in dungeons to which Itan will take you... for a fee. To cover his expenses, you'll need to gather gold from the castle and return to his shop.

And here is the game's most insane twist: Ittle Dew allows you to obtain the items in whatever order you want. Depending on that order, the route through the castle will be completely different, both due to items affecting different parts of the environment, and because of the interactions between their mechanics. More than that, while the game does give you enough gold to buy all three items, it's possible, by finding the correct route, to finish the game with any of the three possible pairs of equipment.

The fun in Ittle Dew is not simply finishing it once, but replaying it and going for a different item combination. It's a mind-bending exercise that forces you to rethink your strategy according to your new set of tools. And make no mistake: the puzzles in Ittle Dew can get outright devilish, requiring the player to think long and hard about what to do. This is especially true for puzzles outside the main dungeons, which are either small caves hiding collectibles, or the two optional endgame dungeons that require the use of all three items to get through. That "Retry Room" in the menu is not there just for show.

This challenging gameplay is accompanied by an extremely charming presentation. Wobbly, colorful graphics make the world look alive, tunes stick to your head for hours after you're done playing, and the cast, while small, is lovable and well realized. Ittle is a nonchalant girl eager for adventure, which plays off of Tippsie's down-to-earthness -- although, to be fair, it's clear that, whatever the fox is drinking, it's not exactly health potions. And Itan, well, let's just say his love for carving goes a bit too far.

Surpassing every expectation and being sold at rather modest price point, I can hardly shower Ittle Dew with enough praise. Far from being a generic, forgettable Zelda-clone, it's a game of its own, building on tried-and-true ideas with fantastic original design. It's not a game for the impatient, nor people looking for action, but if you're willing to sit down and work on some brainteasers, I wholeheartedly recommend it.

This is a pretty short and sweet experience with a good amount of charm to it as well. It's probably not really my thing but I guess puzzle games in general aren't really my thing, especially slide-type puzzle games. I still found this mostly enjoyable regardless of that. If you are a fan of puzzle games like these or the 2D Zelda games which this feels inspired from you'll probably enjoy this more. As it stands though, I found it to be just a neat little romp. My main gripe however comes with replays of the game making the dialogue, while charming initially, rather annoying as there's no way to skip it, which is especially bad if you're trying to go for the sub 15 minute run achievement since you have to mash through it all every attempt, so that's one thing to bear in mind.

Was shocked by how much I liked this game. Was expecting a decent adventure, yet it was so engrossing. There was a great emphasis on streamlining in this, which I usually (or at least did then) disagree with but I was wrong. The seamlessness of the game is one of its strongest points. The puzzle design is very good, the bosses and combat are just punctuation which I think works well. The secret dungeon was also a lot of fun, very difficult at least for me. It's actually genuinely funny too which I don't think many games are. The atmosphere is strong, stronger than I thought it'd be. I like this game a lot.

Fun little puzzle heavy Zelda-like. Most of the puzzles were sokoban style box pushing, but with some extra twists. The combat felt very clumsy, but the game never asked too much of the player and was very forgiving with healing and restarts after death, so it wasn't too frustrating. There's a lot of smirk-worthy humor throughout the game, but nothing really laugh out loud funny.

I wasn't too interested in continuing on to do the optional content, but I enjoyed the three and a half hours I spent on the main quest.

Replayed the game and 100%ed it and honestly, maybe it was because I had finished the second game but I appreciated this game far more than I first did.
There is still some jank with the machanics and puzzles (although still fun!), it felt good to solve the puzzles especially the ones in the mastery cave. Although there is one or two in there that require you to do things that you may not have thought to do at all by this point, though again not bad.

Replaying the game a few times for the different item combo achievements was super fun, especially with the final boss. Overall pretty good game!