Review: My Little Universe (Nintendo Switch)
My Little Universe is a casual adventure/tycoon game in which your job is to collect materials, expand different worlds, and fight monsters.
Starting on an unknown planet, you’re taken through a tutorial on the game. It gives you an ax and shows you how to chop down trees, and the same with a pickaxe to break down rocks and minerals. After collecting enough materials, the game shows you how to use those materials to expand your island, which allows you to discover more materials. After doing this for so long, you should collect enough materials to build a rocketship which, once built, takes you to your first official planet: Gaia. There, the proper game begins.
On Gaia, you start with collecting basic materials such as wood and stone. You then use these to not only expand your island, but also to upgrade your tools. Upgrading your tools allows you to break down materials more quickly. You are also given the opportunity to craft a sword, which comes in handy when the monsters start to spawn.
Defeating monsters gives you coins, which are very useful later on in your upgrades, as it starts to cost you money. Same with expanding certain parts of your island.
As you further expand your island, you not only discover more materials, but you also start to level up. With each level you gain, you’re able to pick a booster. Some of these are very useful, such as the “Pacifist” booster that allows you to walk by monsters without them automatically attacking. There are also some boosters that provide immunity to fire or poison, or make your tools stronger. Dying causes you to lose all your boosters, and starts you back at level 0.
Expanding your island is super-important in this game, and is actually the main objective. Doing so gives you more materials, which can be used to expand even farther, upgrade tools, and upgrade armor (which becomes available a couple planets in). Once you have collected enough materials, you can build a portal that takes you to the next planet. There are 9 in total, each with dungeons.
These are like mini planets within the main one. In the dungeons, you have to do the same as you would outside: collect materials and expand them. The difference is that they tend to have more rare materials and a lot more monsters—and even bosses.
The controls in My Little Universe are simple. You have the option to set your tools to automatically break down materials as you walk near them, but if you choose not to, just holding down Y or pressing it repeatedly does the trick. For areas with larger masses of materials, you can hold down B to wind up a super move; once you release B, it does a lot of damage to the area, which is very helpful when you don’t want to spend too long pressing Y. You change your tools with X, and interact with objects with A.
The graphics of this game are basic, but also very nice to look at. While there isn’t much detail to your characters, you can unlock costumes to make him look a bit less boring. The settings are amazing; there are different biomes on each planet, all of which are unique and fun to explore.
My Little Universe is a very interactive and fun game. With so much to do, it’s easy to get lost in the game and lose hours of your day…and it’s worth it! While the game can be a little repetitive, the fact that you are constantly upgrading your tools, yourself, and the area around you keeps it fresh and exciting.
