When I first saw the reveal trailer for Game Freak’s Little Town Hero – then known simply as “Town” – it was hard to understand what the game was. It seemed like an RPG sporting a very attractive art style with the added quirk of calling on other villagers for help in battle with invading monsters. After playing the game I can definitively say what the game is. Little Town Hero is a story-centric, card combat RPG without literal cards.

Developer: Game Freak

Publisher: Game Freak

17 Hours Played // Review Copy Provided // $24.99

Battles in Little Town Hero are turn-based with random skills assigned to each character. These skills are placed in the player character’s “hand,” but take action points to activate. Skills that haven’t been activated are called “Izzits” then change to “Dazzits” after being activated. Enemy skills are Dazzits by default. Izzits come in three colors: red for attacking skills, yellow for defensive skills, and blue for spells.

Red and yellow Izzits will sometimes have intrinsic effects like Tough guard’s adding one health point to a random Dazzit. The number in the middle of the Izzit is how much power is needed to activate that skill.

Think of the red and yellow skills as units in a card game. Each has an attack value and a health value. They go head-to-head with enemy Dazzits and take damage equal to the enemy’s attack value, but also damage the enemy Dazzit equal to its value. If the health value of a Dazzit reaches zero, it breaks. Breaking all of the enemy Dazzits will allow you to damage their Guts or Hearts. Guts is a type of shield that has to be whittled through before actually doing permanent damage to the enemy. Guts will respawn after damaging a Heart. The same system is in play for the main character. The win condition is to, naturally, damage all of an opponents Hearts.



Taking advantage of breaking all the enemy’s Dazzits requires you to have an activated red Dazzit still available

The core of Little Town Hero is that the battles take place in the main character’s village. After each turn the battle is taken to a new random section of the town. This part of town could have nothing special about it, but there could a villager or another gimmick at the spot. Gimmicks are special items that can be activated with certain Dazzits. Using the Throw ability on a chicken will remove any special effects from all enemy Dazzits and do two damage to the enemy’s body.

The section of town Matock is found is marked by his face. The section of town the battle is currently taking place is marked by the giant monster.

Villagers have two possible ways to interact with the main character. Some will only offer up new ideas on how to fight the monster, which will give a new Izzit with effects that specifically help against that monster. Others have free skills that could help turn the tide of battle. The villagers of this type are usually main characters or important side quest characters. Pasmina will restore three Guts and revive any broken Izzits, for example. Blue Dazzits are very similar to villager skills like Pasmina’s. They can’t go head-to-head with other Dazzits. They instead offer effects such as dealing damage to all enemy Dazzits or buffing your Dazzits attack and defense.

Villager’s Support abilities are free to use, but can only be used once

All of this likely sounds complicated, and it kind of is at first. One of my few issues with the game is that the tutorial didn’t really explain everything clearly. I wasn’t sure how I could break multiple enemy Dazzits if a red Izzit could only be used once during my first battles. Once I got a few fights under my belt, it all started to make sense. Yellow Dazzits and Blue Dazzits are key for surviving the waves of enemy Dazzits then use a red one to actually do some permanent damage. Gimmicks and villagers aren’t there only to set the game apart; they are key to attaining victories against the monsters. It isnt’ easy to explain the satisfying amount of depth present in Little Town Hero’s combat system. Essentially it’s a unique and fun twist on the core systems used in Hearthstone or Yu-Gi-Oh.

Little Town Hero features other traditional RPG mechanics like upgrading abilities

Jumping back to the impressive visuals, the overall art style is easily described as cartoony. Hard black lines define the edges of distinct character and environment designs. Cartoony isn’t meant to be a negative criticism. The town has an inviting and peaceful quality due to the art style present.

Interior designs are the first impressive thing to notice about Little Town Hero. The town that the game takes place in feels incredibly considered. From the overall layout of the town to each interior space every inch of the town has been taken into account. The insides of houses and shops have been decorated to make each space feel lived in and vibrant. The boutique is packed with dresses, powders, and baubles. The weapon shop is bursting with swords and other armaments. The cheese shop has a little mouse hole with a mouse trap near it, because mice love cheese. Exteriors are decorated in the town symbol or have that symbol woven into their architecture. Game Freak took the time to make the town seem like someone’s home.



Deepest lore

The section of the visual style that isn’t as great is the character design. The villager designs range from “fine” to “bad.” They just aren’t as joyful as the environment designs. All the miners are dressed as miners, which while accurate, is kind of boring. The bright spot of villager designs is how the main characters families all share a striking hair color. Pasmina’s family rocks a muted teal while Axe’s family all have crimson locks.

The drab villager designs are more than made up for by the creature designs. The game is about fighting monsters and the monsters are visually a treat. The sheer volume of monsters in the game is impressive. I was initially worried that there wouldn’t be too many different monster fights in the game, but that worry was quickly quelled. There is, at a minimum, one monster fight per chapter with some having two and several side quests ending in monster fights. There is no restrictions on the types of monsters you’ll face. Skeleton snakes, mutant cranes, haunted marionettes, whales with octopus tentacles, and some sort of pig insect are all in the game to fight.

Little Town Hero is a Halloween game

The card combat system isn’t only limited to fights. That is the bulk of its use, but there are also smart uses of the combat system to complete other objectives. Plucking a cat’s hair or preventing something from being stolen are all done in the combat system as well. These situations are presented as puzzles to solve with a circumstance specific set of Izzits. The puzzle solution is found using those Izzits in a specific way. The answer to the solution is kind of a trial and error puzzle, but there the number of times these are used isn’t enough to be exhausting. The puzzles make a nice little tutorial on how better to focus on how your Izzits and Dazzits interact.



Shear a sheep in your card combat game

All the situations listed seem kind of wacky and not like they could be strung together in an eloquent way. However, while maybe not eloquent, the story of Little Town Hero is enjoyable. Similar to the visuals, the story wouldn’t be out of place in a Saturday morning cartoon. Axe, the playable character, wants to leave his village that was sealed off from the outside world. His attempt leads to him being caught, but during his foiled escape he meets Angard, a soldier from the castle. Angard agrees to train him to be a soldier – this also functions as a tutorial – to someday leave the village. After completing some of his training a monster storms into the village.

Since the village is sealed off from the outside world, Axe and his friends set out to find any information about how the monster entered the village. Along the way there are more monsters encounters. The gang makes new friends. Power is corrupting. The themes of the main story are not surprises. Some of the twists are obvious. The experience isn’t without its fun though. The writing is usually humorous and brought me a lot of smiles. Getting to know all my fellow villagers throughout the story is really enjoyable.

Must be

Despite not containing a jaw-dropping, emotionally-hitting main story, there is an interesting subtext that runs through the game. Little Town Hero is a game about refugees. Take the time to talk to other villagers, and a large portion of them will share that they’ve been driven from their home by war. Mr. Currie, who runs the cafe, after being asked about his interesting use of spices remarks that his family had to flee to the town when he was a young child . Angard was forced to leave his home country after it was invaded for its rare supplies of fresh water. The main story is a Saturday morning cartoon, but if you prefer some heft in story telling, there is some to find here in Little Town Hero.

Angard’s story hit close to home due to the fact that in real life fresh water will be a precious resource soon because our planet is dying

Little Town Hero is a video game firing on all cylinders. The developers at Game Freak took a central concept then polished it as best they could to make that concept shine. The art style alone would have made the town inviting, but care was taken to realize the little details of the town’s spaces. The creature designs are infinitely interesting. Toby Fox’s soundtrack, which I didn’t have space to talk about, adds to the charm while being a perfect compliment to the visuals. Little Town Hero has an interesting and deep card combat system that the developers found other clever uses for besides fighting. I could see someone not being interested in Little Town Hero due to the sheer amount of RNG inherent in its genre, but there isn’t another reason I can think of for someone to miss this game.

It’s really hard to think of another story-centric, card combat RPG, but we just so happen to have another here: (SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech). I’ll also link one card focused, golf puzzle game (Golf Peaks) which is a thing that exists! Share your thoughts with us by joining our Discord. Or, if you like what we do here at Nindie Nexus, please consider buying us a coffee.