A tie-in game for a popular shoujo anime from the 80s/90s. Set in a small town, you're tasked with finding 10 dream pearls - which are the reward of various minigames. The games range from slightly tricky to frustrating. None of the few I played were particularly exciting - a racing game, a matching game, a platformer level. I guess for the time it's impressive to have so many game formats in one game, but they basically felt like little set pieces stuck in between a game with hard-to-trigger event flags.

Mostly you run around a 10-screen town trying to trigger events to find the next pearl. There's nothing given to track this progress. You can jump, and it's kind of cute... you can learn to climb a tree... but eh, much of the game feels barely serviceable. A lot seems to be throwback to the original source material - e.g. the main character transforms into a young adult woman for each minigame.

This game is interesting from the lens of trying to make an existing anime work through the format of a game. Some moments are charming... a man wants to eat but he's so sick of eating burgers so you eventually have to get him a banana... but idk, overall it didn't come together. I think if the story threads were easier to follow or progress, and the games made a little bit more polished (or at least given some interesting ideas) it would be a cute 2 hour game or so.

Reviewed on Aug 12, 2023


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