• Price: $19.99 USD
• Developer/Publisher: Ogre Pixel
• Release Date: November 1, 2022

A review code was kindly provided by Ogre Pixel. We thank them for being able to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

I’ve been keeping an eye on Lonesome Village for a while, and I’m excited to be playing it now. You play as an adorable coyote named Wes, who arrives in a vacant village where the inhabitants have mysteriously vanished. The villagers have been trapped inside of a tower nearby, and it’s up to you to save them and restore the village!

Upon entering the tower, you’re told that each floor contains one villager or more, and to free them you’ll need to solve the floor’s puzzle. Some floors have puzzles with multiple sections, while others only have one “round.” The puzzles tend to vary in format, but they frequently involve changing things around to solve them. One floor may have tangrams, while another may test your memory.

Most of the puzzles are not overly difficult, but some can give you a challenge. If you have too much trouble, you can purchase a ticket in the village that will allow you to skip that puzzle. Regardless of what method you choose, once you complete a puzzle and the villager(s) have been freed, they’ll head back down to the village.

Apparently, in order to make it to the top of the tower you’ll have to go beyond simply freeing the villagers. Befriending them and completing tasks for them will earn you additional hearts (representing friendship and gratitude) to use to unlock subsequent floors inside the tower. Having enough hearts to continue is important, but every so often you’ll reach a floor that you can’t pass through unless you provide specific items. That generally means that you need to descend from the tower and find the items needed to advance. (Thankfully, they included a convenient elevator in the tower to decrease travel time when coming and going!)

Although a large portion of the game consists of solving puzzles in the tower, you can have fun with the simulation aspects as well. In between completing requests for villagers and gathering what you need for the tower, you can do a variety of things to customize your experience. You’re given a house in the village, and you can craft or purchase furniture to place inside it. There are paintings and musical instruments that you can buy to brighten up the place. Then, if you want to try a different look on Wes, you can do that too! There are clothing stores that sell some new outfits (I loved Candy the unicorn!), and you can get even more clothes as rewards.

When you’re ready to get back to work, several requests involve growing or gathering food items in or around the village. You can fish or plant crops; the gardens are conveniently located next to your house and the seed shop. The fruits you grow only have one form, but when you grow flowers there are several color variations. That meant that my backpack would fill up pretty quickly, and unfortunately there is not an option to expand your inventory slots. Digging holes to plant seeds and watering them felt really slow, so I wish there were upgrades to allow for tools to affect more spaces. I did like that crops would grow at a relatively fast pace, though.

None of the quests were too much of a hassle, but they really needed a quest log here because it was really inconvenient trying to remember who needs what (and where). I still managed to figure out what I needed to do, but a quest log would have been a good “quality of life” feature for me. Also, a lot of the game’s dialogue felt overly similar amongst the villagers, both when they’re rescued and once you’ve finished all of their quests. When you free a villager, a lot of their dialogue is the same “Our hero! You’ve saved us from the tower!” type of line. Then when you are done with a person’s quest line, they will only say “nice to see you again” each time you try to talk to them.

That being said, I think that the character designs do compensate for some of the weakness in the dialogue. I may not have felt much of a connection with the villagers due to a lack of character development, but the art style still made me smile. They even included some lovely animated cutscenes – both when you start up the game to reach the main menu and also in the game itself. There are small little artistic details for eagle-eyed players to appreciate, such as the carvings in tower archways that match the animal statue on that floor. Even the villagers’ houses have some cute and clever details – like the cheese rug in the house where mice live.

The antagonist has a dark yet adorable design as well. There isn’t any combat in the game, but when you confront the antagonist in the end there’s a neat “puzzle battle” mechanic that I found compelling. It did seem like the final puzzles just before the “boss battle” had a sudden increase in difficulty compared to the rest of the puzzles in the game, but other than that I was pretty satisfied with the difficulty.

The plot did not feel like it was explained well to me though, as I was still confused about the purpose of the tower trapping the villagers by the time the credits rolled. You can also meet additional characters in the post game and complete all character quests if you want to 100% the game. The village may have been vacant in the beginning, but once you’ve saved the day it certainly becomes a bit less lonesome.

If you like the sound of Lonesome Village, check out their BackerKit page linked on the Ogre Pixel website to support them by purchasing merchandise. There are physical and digital copies of the art book, comic, and soundtrack. I especially love the look of the plush Wes and Candy figure, and there are additional physical items to check out. Prices are in Mexican pesos.

Switch it ON or Switch it OFF? Lonesome Village is a wholesome mixture of puzzles and simulation gameplay. There wasn’t enough variation in the dialogue and the plot was a little confusing for me. I also would have liked some quality of life features like a larger inventory as well as quick equip options. But the game definitely has its charms, with endearing villager designs and a colorful collection of customization options. They make the objectives pretty clear for players, and I rarely had issues figuring out what to do. It’s a fun experience with minor frustrations, and I’d love to see more from Ogre Pixel in the future. (An underground game with Wes? Or even underwater? 🤔) 7.5/10