In these strange times, serotonin is a rare and difficult feeling to mine. You need to take the hits of happiness where you can get them. This week, your daily dose of joy comes in the form of a tiny little alligator who just wants to travel the world and do its best. Everyone, it’s time to welcome Lil Gator Game into your lives.
Lil Gator Game is an in-progress indie adventure created by developers Scott Slucher and Robin Burgess. In it, players embody the cutest little alligator around as it traverses an idyllic landscape, runs in adorable circles and bonks stuff with its mallet.
While we’ve only seen glimpses of gameplay through tiny snippets posted online, what we have seen is just heart-crunchingly cute.
lil gator wants the thing#screenshotsaturday #indiedev #gamedev pic.twitter.com/1gdA3jpq2C
— lil gator game (@LilGatorGame) March 27, 2021
In the above clip, posted over the weekend, Lil Gator uses all its climbing, running, bonking and adventuring skills to collecting treasure, defeat cardboard-like beasts and solve environmental puzzles. It’s cute as heck.
And if that preview wasn’t enough to convince you, you can also check out the below clip which features a slalom ride through hills and Lil Gator’s tiny baby feet kicking through the air while it glides across a short creek.
exploring, gotta be prepared for anything, including scary plant monsters!!
ESPECIALLY scary plant monsters#screenshotsaturday #indiedev #gamedev #madewithunity #indiegames pic.twitter.com/NbLbhHhKyD
— lil gator game (@LilGatorGame) March 20, 2021
The game’s style strongly resembles the equally wholesome A Short Hike (created by Adam Robinson-Yu), where you can see its approach to adventuring and the colourful textures of the world. Frankly, it’s great to see more games inspired by that particular style of gameplay — A Short Hike was an absolute revelation, and a gorgeous way to spend an afternoon. We need more stories like it.
Lil Gator Game looks set to continue in the same wholesome vein, with a focus on action-adventuring and exploration.
So far, Lil Gator Game is marked as in development — “a thing that will be a game eventually” — so we shouldn’t expect it to arrive any time soon. Still, with each update the game appears more wholesome and fun, so however long the wait is it’s sure to be worth it.
You can stay tuned to the latest updates on the game by following @LilGatorGame, or you can keep up to date with the development process via Scott Slucher’s personal Twitter.
Even in its current form, Lil Gator Game looks exactly like the adventure we all need in our lives right now.
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