First of all, another ad: Some other indie devs and I organized a free Substack journal about game design for a general-audience: the first volume comes out 5/20 so check it out: https://afterjourneysend.substack.com/p/announcing-volume-1

(Also the Angeline Era (my 3D Bumpslash Action-Adventure) demo is out on Steam! Check it out)

Okay, now the review. Here's thoughts on Sylvanian Families 1 and 2.

SF2: https://www.backloggd.com/u/MelosHanTani/review/1599452/
SF1: https://www.backloggd.com/u/MelosHanTani/review/1572193/

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Again this is a series of childrens' adventure games set in a Sylvanian Family-inspired world, a famous toy series in Japan (and some of the rest of the world). The mainline series had a game release at a breakneck pace every holiday season from 1999 to 2004.

There's a calming idyllic quality to the setting - a hidden forest village free from conflict, kids happily going to school and adults working in craftsmen-esque positions. If you hold up a little social critique to it, it leaves a lot to be desired as childrens' media, but if you're not set on being a party pooper it's a pretty pleasant fantasy world. There's even a Theme Park.

However, the games (so far) are frighteningly - hilariously so - obtuse to progress and clear (at least from the 3rd one) - Japanese YouTube comments of Let's Plays often include thanks to the let's player for clearing a game that was impossible for them as elementary school students.

The 3rd game is no exception and is probably the most obtuse so far.

The main changes from the first two are that 3's tutorial is elaborate: you first play 4 mini-chapters as different animals -getting to know their parents' jobs (the Tailor, Baker, etc) or learning about the minigame and gardening systems.

The basic story premise is that the town has opened a time capsule, but it caused the starry sky to vanish. The 'stars' (fairies) went to the past. And now you have to fix it!

After that you're thrown into a fetch quest as the striped cat girl, which requires you to find those 4 animal friends to receive some magic Sand Dust. Doing this is made tricky by a MOON-esque stamina system that will reset your day if the in-game timer hits 6 PM. To slow the passage of time, you must level up by grinding a variety of minigames, most of which are either luck-based, seemingly-impossible, or overly straightforward. While no issue on modern emulation, you only get one shot per day and you can imagine a kid having their day reset over and over as they fail one minigame after the next, hitting the curfew (which comes remarkably fast at Level 1), obliterating any progress they might have made.

Hilariously, the in-game map, though more visually complex than the previous two, is nearly impossible to use: your position on the map is nonsensical, the map's roads barely correspond to what yousee in-game, and sometimes the name of the area the map says you're in differs from where it seems you are. In one example, a sign says "North for Acorn Hill!" but following the passage takes you to what is unmistakably a Potato Field. Opening the map says you're in "Whispering Woods". And so on. However this is kind of inspiring and interesting, something worth exploring intentionally maybe...

Much is made harder by the fact that hints are only given Once per story beat, by a fairy who speaks to you as you sleep.

But if you make it through that section (and I nearly gave up), you earn a magic hourglass item that will take you back in time! Given that the sound and music are reminiscent of some of Oracle of Seasons/Ages (Feb 2001), I wonder if this game took a note from those. There's even an Ocarina you use for hints...

I'm glad I stuck to the time-travel section because it's the meat of the game and actually has some neat aspects to it. You see your parents, but young, you see a young version of the mayor. Different species live in the town, and where there are houses in the present, are only small molehills in the past. Perhaps there is deep lore to Sylvanian Family's universe. What happened to all the ducks? The moles? Why did the bus to the city vanish in the present? Such questions remain unanswered.

After the initial interest of the past/present, the game makes it clear that it's about finding "Fairy Bottles" in the present (through searching and minigames), and finding Fairies in the past (through some item puzzles and searching). The item puzzles aren't well telegraphed - instead you rely on using an Ocarina to summon the Owl Mayor who will tell you if any fairies are remaining.

I got about 14 or so of the 60-something fairies before quitting. This part of the game is like SF1/2 where you're tasked with finding 60-or-so flowers around the map, but in SF3 it's made a bit more complex because you need to find Fairy Bottles and Fairies, and sometimes the puzzles require you to grow a flower in the present. Overall it's a little drawn-out - there's a seasons system which triggers new dialogue and events, but the writing itself is pretty straightforward, so for a big chunk of it it's replaying minigames and searching the same ways in the past.

There's occasionally some funny lines in there (a bear kid who thinks windmills create wind) but a lot of it is like "I can't wait for customers to try the new bread!" or "It's winter, don't catch a cold!" or even just houses with a single Duck who only says "Hello."

Overall it's certainly building on the previous two games and a little more ambitious, so I wonder what the GBA era will bring for the game series.

Music here: https://downloads.khinsider.com/game-soundtracks/album/sylvanian-families-3-hoshifuru-yoru-no-sunatokei-2001-gbc

For a wordless puzzle game in alien environments, the game lacks a lot of mystique. Something about the top-down view of all the spaces just feels consistently flat on the screen, even when the levels have good layering? The puzzles, too, felt like busywork until at least halfway through the game. The boss battles do not help with this feeling of 'this should feel spooky and alien but it doesn't' with how instantly identifiable they are. Once you actually get to the more open-ended puzzles, it's good, but then there's only like a single area's worth of that to let it soar.