Review: Glittermitten Grove

Ooh, sparkly

You may think you don’t want a game about building huts in trees to house fairies while they collect sunlight and shoot off fireworks.

You may be wrong. Developing a funct🎀ioning fairy society might be exactly what you want.

Glittermitten Grove (PC)
Developer: Mostly Tigerproof
Publisher: Adult Swim Games
Released: December 24, 2016
MSRP: $19.99
Rig: AMD Phenom II X2 555 @ 3.2 GHz, with 4GB of RAM, ATI Radeon HD 5700, Windows 7 64-bit

There’s a lot to take in at the outset of Glittermitten Grove, and despite its kid-friendly look, its systems and economy aren’t obvious right away. Fairies require houses. Houses require wood. Wood comes from cutting down trees. Houses can only be placed in trees. This is just the first resource balance that needs to be taken into account.

A fog blankets most of the land and buildings can only be placed where ther🌞e is light to see the building location. Producing that light requires crystals, which can be harvested underground. Digging underground requires fireworks pointed downward. Fireworks, as it💯 turns out, run on the most easily renewable resource: sunlight.

The goal at the outset is just to build a nice village for the fairies, keep them fed throughout the year, and maybe eventually construct a palace. That’s easier said than done.

Prices for certain types of buildings increase as more are purchased, and eventually exploration toward the east and west slows to a halt. Spaces for additional buildings run out. No new fairies can come to live in the village. But hey, there’s still this unlimited supply of fireworks, and plentiful torches for lighting the tunnels they carve out of the dirt.

It becomes clear soon enough that there’s more lying beneath the surface than Glittermitten Grove initially lets on, figuratively and literally. The economy pushes for exploration downward rather than outward, and while most of the🔯 visible earth houses gemstones and treasure chests, there is a lot of uncharted territory toward the bottom of the map.

Fairies can’t live underground (obviously), but th💯e solution to the otherwise unsustainabᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚle economy might just be down there.

To say more would spoil a lot of the thrill of discovery in Glittermitten Grove. Most of what makes it more interesting than other games in the genre is in what you may find if you venture too far from the village. Don’t just build. Explore.

If you aren’t turned off by the sugary sweet aesthetic, Glittermitten Grove is worth a deep look. It can be difficult to start with its intricate economy and barebones explanation, but those who crack the nut can find so♕mething special hidden🐬 inside.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game purchased by the reviewer.]}