Bite Sized Reviews: Little Odyssey

There’s something oddly relaxing about doing something so mundane.

Even taking something as simple as ‘Fantasy Delivery Boy’ into account, I’ve found a strange kinship with games that make boring concepts addictive to play. Death Stranding took that idea and dialled it all the way up to what I call ‘Batshit Insane’. It’s a game that I’m still trying to understand. I’ve had difficulty getting into Death Stranding, although that is because I chicken out of the anomalies that hunt me down. Having to deal with them when trying to make deliveries while carrying a baby in a glass tube isn’t my idea of a fun Saturday night. I prefer cosy nights in, making sure my death colony in Rimworld thrives.

Back to Death Stranding. Despite all my struggles getting into the game, the way it turns travel into a deep game mechanic is fascinating. Managing weight loads for balance and navigating mountainous terrain should not be as engrossing as it is, but I’ve been surprised before. When I just need something simple to relax, I do ‘dull’ things in games. Euro Truck Simulator 2 is a great example: driving across the world while listening to podcasts or random stuff on YouTube is a great way to unwind. It’s not the only one for the ‘truck sim’ vibes I love. I’ve played X4 Foundations a great deal over the past year, largely roleplaying as a wealthy explorer. I’ve racked up dozens of hours just sitting in my spaceship while my pilot ferries me across the galaxy like an unpaid taxi driver. I’m weird. I find things like that fun.

That was a long introduction, huh? Little Odyssey is a strange little game that scratches the ‘mundane but engrossing’ itch. And that’s the reason why I rambled about glorified delivery boy games earlier! The work of single developer Simon Fita, Little Odyssey launched on Steam last week. I hope it gets some attention because this is a meditative zen game if there was one. You also get to ride a giant pet turtle. And you can pet him. That wins awards on its own.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2434590/Little_Odyssey

The core of Little Odyssey is incredibly simple. Set in a small desert world, the player is tasked with exploring this strange landscape with their turtle companion. Besides that, this is the primary goal of the game. The graphics are cute and while they aren’t particularly amazing, the ambience of the world is fantastic. I really felt like I was part of the Tongs Delta. The graphics combine 2D character models with 3D environments, and it works better than you might think. Combined with the sounds of the world, playing Little Odyssey is rather absorbing!

As for game mechanics, it’s a little deeper than one might expect. The main gameplay revolves around small delivery jobs and upgrading the adorable Turtle mount, but you have some things to consider. Cargo space is limited, so you need to be careful what contracts to take when travelling from village to village. As the Tongs Delta is a desert world, water is scarce and valuable. The cute little Turtle needs his water sips as much as you do, so Little Oddysey does provide some additional challenges to consider. Despite these extra roadblocks, the game has no time constraints. The game plays to the pace of the player, which is just as well. Turtles aren’t well known for being racing cars! Simon has balanced the relaxing heart of his game with just enough mechanics to make the journey exciting. While the game is simple in design, it is surprisingly engaging.

Interaction with the turtle and other villages across the world continues. They’re all basic with a few lines of dialogue, but it is worth talking to them. Sure, some NPCs tell jokes my dad would be proud of, but they always bring a smile to my face. Riding the turtle around the world while listening to the howl of desert winds is immersive and satisfying. Little Odyssey has nailed these little moments. Of course, I keep him happy with little pets. He deserves them.

It is a little more intensive technically than I expected. While it’s perfectly playable on modest hardware, I found my old laptop struggling a little, especially heat-wise. That’s more down to my ancient machine’s internals than anything in Little Odyssey, but it is something to think about. There aren’t any real ways to tweak graphical options, and there’s no way to go into settings from the main menu as of yet. I would like the developer to add these in, as it is a basic QOL feature.

In terms of stability, I haven’t come across any bugs right now, but I did run into some weird crashes when testing it on my Steam Deck LCD. While playable, it ended up crashing a couple of times. One time it forced the Steam Deck to completely reboot, losing all the progress I had. One of the reviews on Steam recommended switching to Proton 9.0-1. After some last-minute tests, I can confirm that Little Odyssey works as intended while using the specific Proton version. While it lacks controller support, it plays great with the Keyboard and Mouse control settings in Steam OS, and there are already several community profiles to try out.

I need to play more Little Odyssey, but as early impressions go, I’m enjoying myself. It’s deeply relaxing to play, and the pet turtle is adorable. Games are improved with cute animals. While the gameplay is simple, that’s the whole point of the game. There’s just enough management to keep me engaged while I explore the world and deliver packages to people across the Tongs Delta. It needs more quality of life features in the settings, and perhaps a few more ways to interact with the world, but this is a solid little game.

Bite Sized Reviews: Time to Morp

It’s Morping Time!

And that wins the award for the least original phrase related to this game in the universe. Great job.

What a busy couple of weeks. Between some massive Early Access releases and LucaNarraCon, I’ve digested games like I happily digest cheesecake. Manor Lords, No Rest For the Wicked and Hades 2 are just a few games I’ve been playing over the past few weeks, and that review list continues to grow. Before I move on to today’s episode, a couple of things.

Thankyou to everyone who reads these. I’ve received some great feedback and lovely messages from people who like what I do, which I appreciate more than ever. 2024 continues to be challenging on every level, and it’s been difficult to make the content I love with my ongoing health issues. I try to be as transparent as possible, but there are days when I just have to put health before content. I’ve got a ton of projects I want to publish for you all, nearly all of which involve exciting video games and the like. One of them is a complete deconstruction of Cyberpunk 2077, now it is effectively finished on a development level. The longest article I’ve ever written was my review series covering Cyberpunk in 2021, and I’m looking forward to returning to it!

Time to Morp is a cute little game. Colony sims are one of my favourite genres to play. Even with my expanding tastes to try a whole range of genres, the colony sim is one genre I will always return to. When I grow tired of playing roguelikes, I sit down with some Rimworld war crimes. I picked up the Anomaly expansion last week and finally decided on the mods for my next playthrough. With over 600 hours in Rimworld, I’m likely to get addicted to it once again. It is just one of those games!

Where were we? Ah, yes. Colony Sims! Time to Morp launched in Early Access a couple of months ago and has been fairly well received so far. When the publisher Yogcast Games reached out to me to see if I was interested in covering it, I leapt at the opportunity. Since its release back in March, the developers at Team Halfbeard frequently updated the game, patching bugs, making balance tweaks and adding more content. They get top marks from me on communication. If this was a scoring contest, the name ‘Team Halfbeard’ alone wins my ‘Coolest Dev Name’ award. Alas, there are no competitions for that. Perhaps I should start one. Here’s the Steam link where you can buy it:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/977510/Time_to_Morp

Time to Morp focuses on the cosier side of colony building. Rather than deciding between feeding kids sawdust and using them as cheap labour, this game is more mellow. Set in a colourful sci-fi world, it reminds me a little of Slime Rancher and other creature collections like it. Starting small, your task as the token grunt is to explore the planet and learn everything you can about it. As the captain of the research ship barked out orders, I quickly got used to the game’s mechanics.

With its colourful palette and easy controls, Time to Morp is easy to fall in love with from a visual point. Being able to explore the world in the third person rather than as an omniscient god hand has its advantages. There’s even a photo mode if you’re like me and enjoy taking constant screenshots during gameplay. An expansive encyclopedia and scanning feature make it easy to find important locations and resources while keeping players up to date with every tutorial and detail. I like knowing things. The tutorial blends with the standard game fairly well through constant task lists and quests from the crew members. These quests are often very simple, but that is the point of the game. Character dialogue follows the same mould, with Sims-like speech as voice acting. This is fine, and it honestly adds to the charm.

I would like it if the Captain did more around the house. He enjoys standing by with his thumb up his arse while giving me orders! Sadly there’s no way to feed him to my growing army of critters, so I’ll stick to insulting him in this review. The core of Time to Morp is Morps, which are fairly cute, cuddly critters in many different colours and forms. They roam the planet and it’s up to you to look after them. Slime Rancher is the best game to compare this to, although Time to Morp takes a more sandbox approach. By building zones for Morps and resources, they make an excellent automation machine, and the research tree expands upon that. Huh. Perhaps there is a little slave labour in this game. Oh, well.

While this is an initial impressions review, I prefer this format when exploring Early Access releases. With development so fluid, anything is liable to change, and Team Halfbeard have many plans for their game. Full controller support is on the way, and while it is playable with a controller already, I’m looking forward to that. By and large, I found it enjoyable on the Steam Deck but most of my time has been on my aging laptop.

This won’t win any prizes for deep character development or anything too complex, as it is built from the ground up for a relaxing experience. Everything about Time to Morp sells that. While I find the zone management systems a little clunky (The requirements for a viable zone can be annoying to fulfil while building the zones around annoying trees, for example), I’m surprised how well Time to Morp grabs me. For those who want a relaxing, relatively stress-free colony sim, Time to Morp has plenty to offer in its current state.