Adorable Adventures

It's spring and we all want to be in some kind of forest soaking up the chirps of birds, watching rivers, and helping wild boars reunite with their families. Adorable Adventures is a relaxing third-person exploration game, and the main character is a sweet little boar named Boris who has lost his brothers and sisters. With his strongest tool, his sense of smell, he must find them. In this forest adventure, few will remain indifferent. I played the version on the PlayStation 5 platform, while the code for this review was provided by the publisher PQube.

The main gameplay loop is sniffing! Using his strongest tool, his sense of smell, Boris finds his way through the forest, encountering various plants, flowers, plastic bottles, or even famous truffles. The scent system works as a visual guide through the forest. Each scent has its own color, while undiscovered trails are always white, and your family is marked in brown. The catch is that Boris's sense of smell is so strong that every new scent you encounter will try to lead you off the path. The game actually forces you to make a choice: will you stay true to your current goal or give in to a new trail?

To make it easier for you, the developers introduced a 'filtering' system. Only when you get to know a specific scent well enough (find it 3-4 times) do you get the option to 'turn it off' in the menu. This way, you clear your visual space and focus solely on what is important for your progress at that moment.

The tasks you perform for your family are quite diverse, although they rely on similar logic. One sister will require you to decorate her garden with specific mushrooms before she joins you, while another is scared and afraid of the dark, so you will literally have to light her way. On paper, such a design may sound repetitive, but the game actually skillfully balances on the edge of monotony.

The salvation lies in its duration and the feeling of discovery. Adorable Adventures is a short experience, and the mechanics are easily 'chewed through' as the game constantly rewards you with little things that feed your curiosity. One moment you will find sunglasses behind a rock, the next you will dig up a soccer ball, and the third you will help Mother Rabbit find her seven runaway bunnies. Even when tasks repeat, the charming execution, solving mysteries, and photographing hidden landscapes ensure that the game never becomes tedious.

You track your progress, missions, and collected stickers through a cutely designed notebook and park map. For those who want a bit more excitement, there are also 'Time Trial' challenges where you race against the clock to beat records. This is where the game's biggest flaw comes to light – the controls. Boris is sometimes a disobedient boar who doesn't always respond as quickly and precisely as you would like. The lack of fluidity and low precision when turning are particularly noticeable in fast races. However, when you think about it a bit deeper, if the controls were perfect, these challenges would likely be too easy. It seems that this 'clumsiness' is an intentional design decision to achieve balance and add a layer of difficulty to otherwise comfortable movement.

Among the additional minor complaints, I must mention the bugs, which are most pronounced when your found brothers and sisters start following you through the forest. There have been truly comical situations where your entire 'pack' stubbornly crashes into the same tree or, in an attempt to catch up with you, simply tumbles off a bridge. Fortunately, the game then just teleports them back next to you. Since I tested the game before its official release, I believe these 'pig flies' will be fixed in the first patches.

The music and soundtrack are worthy of this forest adventure. Cheerful notes accompany you at every step, and finding each new member of the party further enriches the fitting melodies. The animals do not communicate with words, but a narrator guides you through the game, who, in my opinion, has done a phenomenal job.

Adorable Adventures may not be the most complex game you will play this year, but its simplicity and charm make it a perfect escape from big, stressful titles. For that reason, it receives high praise from me, especially on these spring days when I would gladly, just like Boris, get lost in some forest.