TAKEAWAYS
- Adorable style fits the gameplay loop perfectly
- Customization and decoration option are abundant and intuitive
- There’s just enough mystery and discovery to motivate progress
REVIEW
For better or worse, I often find myself playing a lot of taxing games. Whether it be the psychological demands of something like Silent Hill f or the manual dexterity required for most of UFO 50, it can be exhausting! Maybe that’s why Twinkleby, the new super chill home decorator from developer Might and Delight, hit me like a cotton-filled brick.
Like a concentrated dose of the more purely decorative and community-driven elements of Animal Crossing, Twinkleby plops you right in its sky-high world for some much needed relaxation. You start with a single island in the sky, on which you’ll find a quaint little house. You can take your starting assortment of furniture and accent items and arrange them as you see fit, and before you know it a chime will sound and your first neighbor will ferry their way to the island to check out their potential new home.
Once you have that island sorted, another opens up, this time with more expansive options. Two homes can be placed on the second island, and as such you’ll soon be able to welcome two more neighbors. Take their luggage and place it anywhere within a house and wa-lah, that house is now a home! As the loop continues, you’ll find yourself unlocking an archipelago of decorative delights, with a massive amount of customization available through a cute and intuitive interface.
Throughout the process you’ll also find the store loaded up with more items to purchase. The currency you use is obtained through casual play, so there’s no pressure to perform certain actions or wait out some arbitrary in-game timer. The whole thing is as calm as it presents itself to be, and there’s something in Twinkleby even for those who don’t normally fancy themselves the interior decorating type.
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It was the overall interface and presentation that kept me booting up Twinkleby on a mostly daily basis. From the music to the adorable neighbors, especially the charming little jingle that plays whenever a new one arrives, it’s a world that just feels good to live in from time to time.
There’s even something for folks here who fancy themselves the indecisive type. If at any point you don’t like what you’ve done with one of your houses, for instance, you can easily strip the interior bare and start all over. Better yet, you can just yeet the entire house off the island into oblivion… AKA your inventory. Everything you dump into space ends up back in your virtual pocket, making for a nice visual representation of what would otherwise amount to rote inventory management.
You can even change the seasons as you open up new areas, leading to tiered winter wonderlands, or orange and yellow landscapes of autumnal bliss. It’s not all going to be something brand new to longtime fans of the genre, but when it comes together under this particular umbrella, it’s fairly magical.
If you’re looking for a snappier take on this type of game, though, this is most definitely not it. There are a few quirks that could lead to frustration depending on your play style, from the inability to orient certain items exactly how you’d like to the generally slow reaction time of the neighbors. And unless you fully ignore their movements, you’ll find them regularly shattering the illusion of having their own unique homes as they keep wandering into everyone else’s. These are minor quibbles that don’t detract from an otherwise enchanting experience. Neighbors can be quite nosy in real life, after all.
There’s no dark underbelly to be found here. There’s no turning point at which your villagers show their true demonic nature and initiate a hellish avalanche of turn-based battles. Twinkleby is exactly what it looks like, and the absolute worst thing you can do is evict a neighbor by tossing their belongings into the great beyond, which tells them it’s time to hit the bricks. It may sound cruel, but every so often a difficult decision must be made. If that’s what it takes to live a peaceful life in this idyllic world of dollhouse delights, then so be it.
Platforms: PC (Steam)
Publisher: Might and Delight
Developer: Might and Delight
Available: Now
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