Super Little Acorns Turbo 3D
Genre: Nut Grabbing
Developer: Team Pesky
Publisher: Pixel Toys
Release Date: 4/18/13
Mr. Nibbles has a problem. Other woodland creatures have stolen his stash of acorns, and he needs to get those acorns back otherwise his family will starve. Instead of grabbing a shotgun and going all Fallen Down on us, Mr. Nibbles instead scurries out into the forest to gather his acorns back.
The game is separated into years and seasons. There are five levels in every season, four seasons in every year and three years to play through. The levels are small areas with acorns scattered throughout to collect. A few levels will contain different objectives, like the boss races or also gathering up some of Mr. Nibbles delinquent children in addition to the acorns, but the majority of the levels are just to collect the acorns within a time limit. This is done through platform jumping, rope swinging and a couple of power ups in the form of hats within the levels that will grant you additional toughness, speed, or boost jumping. The levels are well designed and work perfect for playing the game in short bursts.
That might sound very basic, and the core of the game is fairly straight forward and simple to play. If you are only concerned with gathering the acorns, the game is also pretty easy to complete. The only thing that can kill you in the game is water, and that doesn’t have a very big presence until later levels. Thankfully the developers have included additional layers to the game to offer more of a challenge to those who may want it. Every level has medals to earn, a fruit medal that can only be gained by collecting the fruit in a level (which will only appear after you’ve collected all of the acorns), a ninja medal for defeating all of the enemies, and a speed medal for collecting all of the acorns within a shorter time limit. Collecting these medals give you additional acorns and the fruit ones unlock fun costumes to play around with. They also can be very challenging at times, even for a player who has a lot of experience with platform games.
Aside from the medals there’s also an additional Challenge mode, and a Turbo mode which can be unlocked, though as far as I can tell all it does is increase movement speed of the main character and enemies. All combined the game has sixty levels which encourage players to replay them for additional acorns and rewards, a challenge mode and Turbo mode. Not a shabby amount of content, which is good because it may take an experienced player only a couple hours to just run through and collect the majority of the acorns in the normal mode.
Graphically the game looks nice. All the characters have an intentionally blocky, cartoonish look about them that is thematically consistent with the levels, background and characters. It’s cute. The costumes are fun to mess around with as well, once I unlocked a bunch of them I would switch back and forth from the Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses to an undead/pirate combo. The squirrel family in tears if you die is adorably sad. With the 3D on it helps make the 2D graphics pop out from the background, except it doesn’t add that much to the game and I preferred to play with it turned off. The audio works well for the game.
My understanding is that this was an iOS game first, however the game controls perfectly on the 3DS. You can either use the joystick of the D-pad for movement, and the B button (or the A button) works for jumping and throwing a grappling line.
At $7.99 it’s a little harder to justify the purchase than for a cheap iOS game, howeverSuper Little Acorn Turbo 3D is a fun platformer that is certainly worth checking out if you enjoy platform games.
Short Attention Span Summary
It’s cute, fun, easy to play and offers additional challenge to those seeking it. Definitely recommended.
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