The Empire of Tongs Delta needs you! Answer the call and become a transporter. Transporters are important in this arid land where a lost message can spell disaster for a whole town. You’ll be transporting mail of all sorts aided by your best friend, a giant magical turtle. While roaming the land you’ll meet a friendly cast of characters. The inhabitant of Tongs Delta are always happy to stop for a chat. Work through the regions of Tongs Delta to finally reach your goal of meeting the emperor.

Little Odyssey is a relaxing adventure game. This indie game is developed and published by a single developer. Little Odyssey is Simon Fita’s first big project, and he seems to be very passionate about it.

The Empire of Tongs Delta is separated into three settlements; Longshore, Star Rock and Grand Plains. You’ll start your adventure in Greeting town, a part of the Longshore settlement. Here the region’s forwarder will give you a temporary transporter license. The forwarders are tasked with managing the transporters and helping them. Your job consists of carrying parcels, letters and other objects to the citizens of the communities. Be careful though, because in the desert a sandstorm is always a moment away. In Longshore, the main quest consists of rebuilding the broken bridge, but before you can accomplish this you’ll need some money. You’ll need to complete several smaller tasks to earn some coins. Once you earn those precious coins you’ll be able to buy upgrades for your turtle, fruits and tons of fun hats. Each settlement has its own main quest that you must fulfill before passing to the next area.

Little Odyssey’s colourful artstyle is very cute. The aesthetics are reminiscent of Paper Mario. It really fits the cozy atmosphere of the game. It’s the type of game where you wander around and enjoy taking in the sights. The world is surprisingly large for a small game, and I just loved wandering around admiring the different views. The sound effects are interesting. You can see the developer cares about the details. The music was good, but unfortunately I found it repetitive after spending a long time in the same settlement.

The controls are simple: to walk or ride your turtle you’ll use WASD, to mount your turtle F, and to interact E. You can also hit the space bar to advance automatically, however you must still manually steer with WASD. You can move and zoom the camera using the mouse. The most important aspect you have to keep your eye on is your water level. The Empire of Tongs Delta is a desert so carrying water is vital. You drink at the well to refill when your water has run out. If you are on the road, eating a juicy fruit will replenish your water part way. There is a day/night cycle. During the night, the temperature drop makes your water level go down faster. That is not a problem, since one of the first items you can buy is a sleeping bag. You can use it to sleep through the night. Each settlement has different merchants. Every merchant has a limited number of items that are for the most part different from the other shops. You gain coins by completing quests which you can find on boards in each region.

The tutorial consists of tips that show up in the right corner. I didn’t find it very user-friendly. If you don’t happen to be looking when the tips appear you might miss them. The game is not very complicated, but there are still some things you need to learn. As an example, in the beginning of the game My water level was low so I dismounted my turtle and went to the well. It took me a couple of minutes to realize that I had to ride my mount to the well so it could drink to refill my water provisions. In the end I did figure it out. It’s not a huge issue, but it would’ve made my life easier had it been specified.

Certain aspects of the game could use some improvements. When opening your backpack, you have to press a key, but as soon as release it the backpack closes. You have to keep pressing the key as long as you want to look in your backpack and it’s the same with your journal. I find that to be a strange design choice especially since you’ll have to click items in your backpack to use them.

Another issue that I’ve run into is the travel pace. At first I quite enjoyed the slow pace of my ride since it gave me the chance to relax and take in all of the beautiful sights. After a while it became slightly tedious. There are several ways you can quicken the pace temporarily. Eating a fruit or petting your turtle gives you a short boost. You’ll also come across some snakes. When you interact with them they sing and it also gives you a slight boost. However these snakes are rare. Finally after completing the second region, you get access to the port where you can take rafts to the different settlements. There are two problems with that; it’s a little late in the game to acquire “fast” travel, and secondly the rafts only leave at a set time. It only leaves once a day for the Grand Plains settlement, so while it’s faster once you’ve boarded you still have to wait for it. Since the whole premise of this game is to deliver stuff throughout the world, having a pace that slow kind of takes some of the enjoyment from the game.

I enjoyed wandering around the Tongs Delta with its lovely visuals and relaxed atmosphere for quite awhile. Nonetheless in the end the slow travelling pace, the shallow characters and the occasional game crashing took from the experience. Having said that, I believe the game has a lot of potential. I will be keeping an eye on any future updates. It’s evident that this developer has put a lot of love into this game. I trust that with time and updates it will be a game worth playing.

Positives

• Interesting Paper Mario like aesthetics
• Cozy and relaxing atmosphere
• Cute collectible hats!

Negatives

• Character are one-dimensional
• The dialogues are practically non-existent for secondary characters
• Riding pace is painfully slow
• occasional crash
• Several quality of life improvement are needed