Sometimes I find myself wanting a break from the intense shooters and quick-paced fighting games that I fill so much of my time with. I could watch nothing but action movies or thrillers without the desire to watch a feel-good movie on the Lifetime channel, but it is nice to play a relaxing game now and then. Land of Screens is a perfect game to fit the criteria for me, offering a quick experience that’s as cute as it is wholesome.

Land of Screens is the latest game from developer Serenity Forge, who you may know for developing Date Night Bowling, as well as helping develop and/or publish other titles such as Neversong and Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! just to name a couple. This point-and-click puts you in the shoes of Holland, who is going through a breakup. The typically personal issue is turned into a public affair when the news hits social media.

By attempting to distract herself from the addictive troubles of social media, she discovers how difficult it is for people to detach from their own screens of social media, games, and internet browsers. What follows is a cute adventure through familiar social situations as she works up the courage to talk to people and help them connect with others. She does this during events such as an awkward party, a family reunion, and a concert where she has never heard of the band.

The story is quite simple and I’m tempted to bring up the comparison to a wholesome Lifetime channel movie again. Not to say that the writing is plain or that the characters are boring (far from it), but because it hits you over the head with its theme. Although Land of Screens doesn’t dive deep into the costly negative repercussions that social media can have on someone, it does highlight a lot of the ways it can affect people. This includes social anxiety, the desire to keep personal lives separate, and of course the addictive aspect with everyone and their mother being glued to their phones.

What I appreciated about the theme was how it’s handled. I partially expected a topic like this to be portrayed in an extreme matter that ended with Holland and her friends throwing their phones into a lake. Instead, it manages to touch upon the issues people can have using phones without being entirely one-sided. It’s just a cute story about people stepping a bit away from their screens or at least feeling more positive and aware of the effects they can have on them.

This is pulled together with a cast of colorful characters and hilarious (yet believable) dialogue. The excessively worrying mother who just keeps on talking and the mobile gaming addicted friend is as familiar as the selfie-obsessed bro and the reclusive shut-in who’s obsessed with dogs. I especially enjoyed the inclusion of the awkward silences and pauses that happen when you try to talk to someone who’s hyper-focused on their phone. It’s the small things like that which are incredibly relatable in the writing.

Even though some characters are basic tropes and it can be easy to guess their opinions or responses, the dialogue always kept everything feeling fresh and fun. In a point-and-click where you’re just walking and talking to people 99% of the time with no voice acting, entertaining writing will go a long way.

At the expense of repeating myself, I have to highlight how much everything works thanks to the characters and the overall art style. There are only so many different screens that you’ll walk across for each chapter and some of them take place on only one, but they all felt very distinct from each other. Each one is filled with wonderful little details and if there’s a window or if it’s set outside, there’s always a fantastic background shot of mountains or buildings.

Of course, it can’t be understated that a big part of what makes every chapter look special is the color-diverse palette of characters. Not only are they all charmingly written, but each one of them pops whether they’re pink, purple, yellow, brown, or green. Even the one dog you see is an adorable blue.

Considering how short the game is, as well as how many different characters there are and that you have conversations with all of them, it helps that they all look unique. There are obvious similarities with relatives during the family reunion chapter, but there isn’t a strong unified style for everyone else. Eyes are drawn differently. Some hairstyles are round and others are sharp. One character might have a long thin neck and another might seem to not have one at all. It makes for a very diverse and animated world.

If the visuals and my descriptions are not enough, playing this game is like playing a Saturday morning cartoon. The art style used is just extremely nostalgic to me but I cannot think of a work that matches it. Either it’s just on the tip of my tongue or it just somehow perfectly encapsulates what I remember watching with a bowl of cereal on a weekend.

Some elements don’t work as outstandingly great. When it comes to the music, for example, I found it to be pretty okay across the board. Each chapter comes with at least one track and each one certainly fits the chapter, but that’s about it.

That’s not a negative for me though. If anything, I do have to give credit still in that I didn’t get sick of the looping track at any time since I was spending 20-25 minutes per chapter. Aside from the chiptune jamming in the concert chapter, the music just wasn’t very memorable to me.

Something that was a little hit or miss for me was the animations and character expressions. Generally speaking, both are adorable and full of life. I thoroughly enjoyed Holland’s hair bobbing up and down as she’s walking and swinging her arms as much as I enjoyed her squinting or rolling her eyes during conversations. I also loved seeing all the different levels of determination, annoyance, and boredom that so many characters had while interacting with their phones. The animations are terrific and the character expressions are perfectly used.

Unfortunately, they do feel a little lacking at times. Each character only has so many unique animations and expressions to them. For most characters, this isn’t an issue because you’re interacting with different characters over all the chapters. It’s mainly with Holland herself and a few recurring characters that it does become slightly noticeable that you’ve seen this same animation used multiple times. This is me being a bit nit-picky, but it is something I noticed as I clicked and read through all the dialogue.

This brings me to the only aspect I didn’t like, which is thankfully a very small one. At times you’ll be provided with a dialogue choice that has no effect on the story besides an additional unique line or two. At first, I assumed that maybe these choices had more weight to them during development as news about the game did go quiet for over a year, and then it missed its quietly announced Christmas 2021 release. However, there are gameplay demos from right after the game was announced that seem to have the same arbitrary choices.

There is a lack of replay value and I imagine branching paths or different endings would help, albeit at the expense of expanding the game’s scope. While I understand the desire to keep things fresh, the dialogue choices feel like an unnecessary attempt to spruce up the gameplay. The writing is more than strong enough to stand on its own and I think it would have been better to have more moments of picking up items if the goal was to mix it up.

Looking at it as a whole, I had a lot of fun playing Land of Screens. I absolutely love the visuals, the characters are endearing, and the hilarious and relatable writing does a lot to make them come to life. Although I do have a couple of tiny grievances, this is a small and short game that took me a couple of hours to finish. That length does a lot to help mitigate part of the problems.

The game is a joy to play whether it’s a palette cleanser from other games you’re playing or if you’re a fan of point-and-clicks. I can’t guarantee it will have a huge impact on your opinion of social media, but it is a fun little adventure to spend a play session with.

A PC review copy of Land of Screens was provided by Serenity Forge for this review.

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Land of Screens

$5.99

8

Score

8.0/10

Pros

• Adorable Visuals
• Charming Writing and Characters
• Cute Animations
• Short and Sweet

Cons

• Unnecessary Dialogue Choices
• No Replay Value
• Slightly Noticeable Repeat Animations