Strawberry Vinegar: A Cute Story About Friendship, Love, And Good Food

 *Note: I received a game code for the Nintendo Switch for my honest review of the game. Thank you to Ratalaika Games for the game code.

Strawberry Vinegar is a visual novel that introduces us to the main character Rie Sakuraba and her parents. Right away, I noticed how cute and colorful the artwork is. Rie explains a lot about her family and she comes across as a bit cynical which is a little surprising considering she's a ten year old kid, but it works well with the flow of the story. Rie's parents seem to be opposites and yet their dynamic works and the story shows a beautiful love between the two. As we get to know Rie, she narrates and explains that she's very much an introvert. Rie doesn't really talk to her classmates and doesn't seem to be friends with anyone and Rie insists that she likes it that way, but it seems there may be more to it than that and this may be a way of Rie protecting herself from disappointment and hurt. 

Rie's parents.

It isn't long before the story introduces Licia, a little demon girl who appears in the family kitchen eating the cookies Rie just baked. Licia really likes human food and demands that Rie keep feeding her delicious food for a week or she'll reap her soul. This brings up a funny conversation with Rie not believing Licia at first and a debate about how much a soul is actually worth. Even funnier is how Rie's parents just accept all of this at face value and somehow convince themselves that Licia is from Norway. 

Licia and Rie meet.

The story is a nice slice of life slow burn and it also celebrates eating food together. The artwork for the food is incredible. Each dish looks beautiful and tasty. Rie's description of the food complements how amazing all of it looks. There were a few favorites of mine in there and it definitely made me hungry. That storytelling of how food can bring us together and how it tastes better when we share it with the people we love and care about.

All the yummy food! 

I love the interactions between Rie and Licia because it shows quite well how the two girls are so different and yet find common ground through food. Licia is trying these dishes for the first time and Rie finds herself actually having fun and discovering the power of friendship and love. 

Licia and Rie at a festival.

The other locations shown in the game like a festival are done really well and very pretty. The artwork for the whole of the game is vibrant, cute, and really brings this visual novel to life. Each area shows off the different dishes and that is where the artwork really shines. It brought back my own happy memories of sharing food with my family and friends.

Delicious dango.

The music for the game is nice and sets the mood for each scene. While Rie does heavily narrate which can cause the story to drag a little in places, I didn't mind because the main characters and side characters are likable and charming. There's wonderful bits of humor and heartwarming moments that add to the layers of the story beautifully. 

Delicious omurice.

Ultimately the story is about Rie and Licia and how their friendship blossoms and becomes something more. I love that it happens slowly and organically and in a way that is age appropriate for both girls. The story and art shows a lot of love for the characters which I really appreciated. I loved them all and found myself smiling often at all the lovely moments they had with each other and enjoying every bit of the story itself. Strawberry Vinegar is a cute story about friendship, love, and good food that is absolutely worth your time if you love visual novels and a great first visual novel for first timers. 

Licia and Rie having a cute moment. 

*Strawberry Vinegar is available to play on the following platforms: Steam, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, and Xbox One

*Join our community on Twitch as we play games and discuss mental health: https://www.twitch.tv/mothergamer

Mothergamer Plays Ooblets

 Ooblets starts off with a cute introduction about how your character moves to Badgetown where there are adorable creatures called Ooblets. The character design is really nice with a variety of skin tones, hair styles, and hair colors. You can also choose an outfit for your character and there is a lot to choose from.

Designing my character. 

Badgetown is a nice town with a community that is down on its luck. The mayor of Badgetown explains this and introduces you to the four Ooblets clubs : Mimpins, Peaksnubs, Frunbuns, and Mossprouts. This gives you a chance to choose which club you would like to join and gives you a starter Ooblet. For myself, I went with Mossprouts and got a Shrumbo, a cute mushroom Ooblet. You also get an abandoned farm with a house you can live in. This gives you an introduction to the farming aspect of the game which is easy to follow and rather fun. 

Then you get introduced to your first dance battle. The explanation is that rather than fight Ooblets have dance battles. The dance battles are fun and are easy to follow because it's designed like a simple card battle. Each move costs a dance beat and you have a set amount of points to earn. The dance squad that gets to that amount of points first wins the dance battle. This is how you get new Ooblets because when you defeat them in a dance battle you get a seed from them which you can plant on your farm. You grow the Ooblet and when it's ready to harvest you get a new Ooblet to join you. 

Dance battles are fun!

I really enjoyed the farming in Ooblets. It's relaxing and it provides the crops you need to recruit new Ooblets and offers materials and ingredients for crafting. Cooking is another thing you can do in the game and it encourages you to keep up with this by getting new recipes from the town wishing well and various quests. This also gives you food and drinks that you consume to replenish energy because farming things cost energy. Your Ooblets can help with farming too once you build them a little house called an oob coop and you can upgrade these to make them bigger so they can house more Ooblets and give them seeds to plant, water, and harvest. It's another fun layer to the farming in the game. 

The Ooblets help out on the farm.

You can have up to eight Ooblets following you as you go about your day and you can give them accessories too such as a witch hat or a cute parasol. There are about forty five different Ooblets to collect and all of them are wonderful and adorable. I loved the myriad of all the types of Ooblets. For each species of Ooblets you have three types of that species; normal, unusual, and gleamy. Gleamy would be like a shiny in Pokemon. All of them in design are very cute. 

Ooblets in hats!

Farming and dance battles are not the only thing you can do in Ooblets. The main goal in the entire game is to help improve Badgetown. You of course also can and should make friends with the people living in Badgetown. They give you various quests such as repairing a hot air balloon or bringing them a specific item they ask for. This earns you gummies which is the currency in Ooblets as well as items they gift you. 

Helping out a friend.

There's fishing in Ooblets and it's pretty easy. As long as you have bait, you just stand and fish and get items from fishing ranging from crafting materials to gummies. There's other towns to visit too and this is also how you find more Ooblets. Each town has their own variety of Ooblets and as you discover each new one it gets added to your Ooblets almanac. The different towns have their own unique style and themes, all of it very cute.

Doing some fishing.

As you upgrade buildings, expand your farm, and find more recipes this unlocks more items and story quests. My personal favorite was the dance barn because this unlocks daily dance tournaments which are a lot of fun and give nice rewards. You can participate in the dance tournament once each day and they are three rounds. The first two rounds give you wishies which can be used at the wishing well to receive items and when you win the third round you get that day's reward. It's worth your time to do it because you get things like oob coops and some nice outfits.

Dance barn time!

There are some things that I wish Ooblets would address. One thing was the music and sound settings for the game. While they can be adjusted, I found that every time I started the game I would have to adjust the settings to where I had them. It resets every time and that is a bit frustrating. Inventory space is a finite item. I kept running out of space even with having the biggest size backpack and having a ton of storage chests. I kept having to buy more storage chests and because everything, yes everything is used for crafting, cooking, farming, and more it became very cluttered and I would have to spend a tedious amount of time organizing everything to make it fit. There were a couple of game crashes which was a bit frustrating because it meant I had to restart from where I left all over again. 

The good news is that there have been several patches that have fixed a lot of bugs and the crashing issues so that definitely helped to improve things a lot. Overall, I love Ooblets. It's cute and fun, with a nice relaxing vibe and a great whimsical art style that tells a good story.

Ooblets is great fun!

*Ooblets is available to play on the following platforms: Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One

Join our community on Twitch as we play games and discuss mental health: https://www.twitch.tv/mothergamer