Lil Gator Game rules. It’s a kid’s game about playing pretend where you play a kid’s game about playing pretend. It isn’t a triple-a game with a 60 hour plot, it’s a short breezy lil game with some great dialogue and interactions. I played it with kiddo and 100%’ed it over the course of two evenings, passing the controller back and forth.

Structurally it’s sorta Breath-of-the-Wild-esque. You play a lil gator kid, and your goal is to play Legend of the Hero with your other animal buddies in an attempt to get your sister interested in playing too. As expected, this starts with finding your sword (a stick), shield (a pot lid), and cap (it’s just a hat), and glider (a big sweater). There’s no “real” combat in the game. There are “enemies” but they’re slimes and skeletons and taluses and such drawn on cardboard standees set up around the island. You kill them to get confetti to craft with. World looks great, jumping around and climbing and murdering cardboard all feels great.

After collecting your gear, and failing to get your sister interested in playing this game, you open up a pretty sizable island to explore, with a main quest of finding your friends and their little off-shoot friend groups and bringing everyone to the central playground to make such a spectacle that your sister will have to get involved and have a fun time. Gameplay throughout this second section is based primarily on exploration, with a secondary goal of solving the childhood interpersonal dramas taking place between all these kids.

It’s not super challenging, or deep, but it’s a cute well-made little game about making games about making games about making games. And there’s DLC coming, and it looks like the DLC is going to just straight up be More Game. Highly Recommended.