Strawberry Loft

A small, secluded village sits nestled in the woods. Kieferberg, a place where everyone knows everyone and you’re expected to make an appearance at Sunday mass every week. It’s a sleepy village that doesn’t get many visitors and gossip runs like wildfire through the streets when it’s good. While preparing for the biggest festival of the year, a dark cloud of misfortune looms over Kieferberg making the inhabitants restless. Old stories of the woods being enchanted are whispered in the alley ways after church. The Lord is no longer enough to make them feel protected. Some residents think there needs to be more drastic steps taken to ward off the evil seeping outside the town’s gates. Finally, someone says it, there’s a witch in the woods she’s always been there she’s just  been dormant, but her bones are rattling as she wakes. Fingers are pointed in accusation, with the initial suspect being Elise, because why is she still living alone in the woods? Is she a witch waiting to hex Keiferberg or is she really a Little Goody Two Shoes?

Little Goody Two Shoes is a horrific modern take on classic fairy tales complete with romance, witches, and the all-important lesson that messing with ill-intentioned magic is never a good thing; No matter how badly you want to change your life to get what you deserve. This twisted adaptation was developed by AstralShift, who also created Pocket Mirror which got me to pick this game up, and published by Square Enix. The story runs parallel to the original 1765 Little Goody Two Shoes folktale. A young struggling orphan girl is gifted with a pair of shoes. This simple act changed the trajectory of her life as she goes on to live helping others as she was helped. Sort of the ultimate pass it forward. Until she becomes a teacher, continuing to give her kindness to her community. The game is similar, but the evil version. Elise is an orphan with the game opening to her grandmother’s death, and she kind of inherits a farm, but also a poor lifestyle. She digs her red shoes out of the garden as if they rose from hell itself. They’re the marker of a pact from the devil and Elise puts them on with glee. After accepting the bargain Elise is told she can have any wish fulfilled if she performs three sacraments or provides three sacrifices to the entity referred to as Him, it’s Ozzy from Pocket Mirror. With the instructions given the player can start gathering the sacraments.

Playing Little Goody Two Shoes kind of felt like being a frog in a boiling pot. I didn’t realize the danger in the dialogue until my first few missteps when talking to the villagers. The game has a witch suspicion meter that can be raised when being questioned by nosey villagers. If you provide an answer they don’t approve of the town’s suspicion of Elise goes up. I felt like some of the questions had obvious answers, while others felt more obtuse. When the meter went up to three witch hats I started to sweat. I had plenty of wiggle room though. Little does the town know the witch isn’t the entity they have to fear. The real evil of the game is the entity Him. A false God of sorts who grants wishes at the price of the wish receiver giving up the unimaginable. This doesn’t make the witch less real, and to my surprise she comes off as trying to protect Elise. The witch is more of a victim than the game first leads you to believe as the witch’s woods and magic are warped against her will by Him. I ended up feeling sympathetic for the witch who wanted to exist in peace in her wood, and feels the most innocent in this fairy tale.

One of the more spine-chilling reveals in the game, to me, came from the reveal of Elis’s past. Standing at the foot of a pentagram with a sacrificial lamb staring at Elise with lifeless eyes, the witch cryptically lore dumps in a way Elise can’t comprehend but the player can put together. Wailing, the witch hauntingly proclaims Elise was grown in her wood, her womb, and ripped away from her. It makes the imagery of Elise being found in the woods more chilling. Elise is a part of the witch and when Elise is manipulated by Him I imagine it feels like another punch to the gut for the witch. Her own daughter the last person the witch could have clung to, to help her chase the evil from her being was assisting in her destruction. The witch is a red herring of a villain who cries out for help but is just another sacrifice as her power is snuffed out. Elise never understood what affects her actions had on the realm beyond her own.

Stolen souls play a large part of the story telling for Little Goody Two Shoes, but they are slightly hidden. Golden Maidens are the echoes of souls found in various locations around the map at night. They are past victims of His magic that pass on messages to Elise about how they were once the ones in His favor having their dreams granted. They had it all but gave up what they loved most to get what they wanted most. The Golden Maidens are more than just world decoration, they’re helpful. When you interact with a Golden Maiden Elise will lose sanity, which sucks, but sometimes they give you food, which I found helpful. It is heavily implied that while at the horrific sacrificial lamb scene Elise’s grandmother is the Golden Maiden standing there.

 Giving the sacraments to Him means giving up pieces of Elise-like blood and hair, but you can’t grant a life altering wish without altering a life. This horror story is also a dating sim with three options, Freya the village sweetheart who also works as an errand girl. She was my romantic pick. Lebkuchen is the towns nun who attempts to steer Elise in the right direction. I always got the feeling Lebkuchen knew more than she was letting on, but I haven’t pursued her romantic route so I’m not sure if there is more under the surface with her. Last, but not least is Rozenmarine who shows up in Elise’s chicken coup in the dead of night looking like a witch. Wearing a dark robe, straw witches hat, and she’s traveling with a goat who sometimes seems like he may have belonged to a witch. Sometimes the goat just stares in a creepy way at Elise. Rozenmarine is the one who convinces Elise that He has chosen her for greatness. She even guides Elise through the sacraments. Without Rozenmarine I doubt Elise could have ventured as far as she did into the depths of hell. Again, never playing Rozenmarines romance route, I wonder how she would feel about the ending? Would she take it with grace or fear like the other girls?

There are 10 endings in Little Goodie Two Shoes in some Elise gives up on her dream of being rich and lives peacefully with her romantic partner, in others she tries, but fails the final sacrament and Elsie is burned at the stake. The most gruesome endings happen when Elsie completes the final sacrament to get her wish, the sacrifice of the most important thing to her, her lover. Whoever the player chooses to romance is sacrificed to Him in a graphic heartbreaking way, but Elise gets to live in a beautiful castle after. I ended up getting the ending where Elise is burned while her friends watch in horror. The endings need specific criteria met that I didn’t realize.

When it comes to game play there are several different styles of play as well as meters to pay attention to. There are four meters to take into account when taking care of Elise, health, hunger, sanity, and suspicion. Food becomes harder to come by as the game goes along. The stores only have so much food for each price range, and you have to stretch it for the in-game timeline of a week. The most annoying character in the whole game is Muffy, I can’t stand her. Elise is required to give Muffy a specific food item each day to keep her from spreading rumors about Elise that could raise the witch suspicion meter. It was mostly annoying because I had trouble remembering what Muffy wanted if I put the game down, and I couldn’t find a way to check again. Elise makes money by doing odd jobs which are completed through different types of mini games in a cute arcade cabinet aesthetic. The chore games have simple controls and objectives like walking back and forth to catch good apples and avoid rotten ones. The game also has neat puzzles, my favorite chains you to an NPC character and you must step on the right tiles together. The game takes you through several small dungeon-like areas during the witching hour. I feel like Little Goody Two Shoes starts fairly easily and then has an impossibly hard difficulty spike in the third dungeon, the bedewed forest of berries. Stalking enemies, harder puzzles, and a boss fight are suddenly introduced to the game play. I struggled a lot during this section of the game.

Little Goody Two Shoes has beautiful visuals that are shuffled throughout the game keeping it visually interesting. The game is a charming pixel art while cut scenes are drawn like story book art and move like paper dolls. The death scenes are done in black and red with dramatic flashes, and I watched them quiet a few times. They almost sear themselves into your mind. The chapters have intro cards, and there is a musical number after Elise finds the red shoes. In a way I felt like the changing art style helped draw me in and tumble down the rabbit hole with Elise.

Everyone strives for more at one point in their life, and you decide how far Elise is willing to go. Are you willing to lose yourself to the madness and magic, or can you stay afloat in reality and accept the cards you’ve been delt? Little Goody Two Shoes is a terrifying spin on a tale of gratitude twisting it into a tale of greed. Only you can decide if riches are worth heartache. I enjoyed the world of Little Goodie Two Shoes even when I was on the cusp of rage quitting the boss fight. If you enjoy unique scary games, I recommend picking it up!