Acornia: Mirror Worlds, the newly announced action-adventure shop manager from Splashteam and The Arcade Crew, is adorable.
The daily cycle is fun to engage with, combat is simple but has a great twist, and running your shop is straightforward but hints at more. The preview section I got to play is firmly set in the beginning of the game, so while it was quite simple, you can start to see how it can develop more. Most importantly, it feels great to play, making Acornia: Mirror Worlds one to watch in 2027.
Dimensional Baked Goods
Acornia: Mirror Worlds puts you in the furry paws of Alva, a squirrel returning to her home in a giant tree. It’s seen better days, as she inherits a run-down dessert shop from her parents. The great tree that houses the shop, along with a little settlement, is run-down and beaten up, and Alva sets out to restore it to its former glory. The issue? The dark dimension known as the Duramen is encroaching, with Alva traversing both dimensions using a special mirror. It’s a fun setup that’s supported by the gameplay systems, where every day, Alva has tons of responsibilities to handle.
Alva gets up bright and early at 6 a.m. and must be in bed by midnight, so there are only so many hours in the day to get stuff done. The shop is in disarray and empty at the beginning, with Alva setting out to grab materials to build things like a fridge, chest, and tables. These ingredients all wait in the Duramen, accessible anytime as Alva is free to jump between dimensions. Once there, enemies are all over, with Alva’s mightiest weapons being her cheeks. She can suck up ammo and shoot the enemies, but the major catch? The ammo is the ingredients and materials.
You Shoot What You Eat
This creates a delicate balancing act, even in the early game. Which of your materials are the most expendable depending on your goals? The shelf needed to sell fruits needs wood, making clay the weapon of choice; each shot grants more materials, but it also costs the ones you carry. That goal changes drastically as you need to build a cooktop, where clay and stone are critical. It creates a delicate balance between fighting monsters, collecting materials, and making more items and baking more goods for your shop. You can even stun enemies and shoot them right back at their friends. Alva’s mighty cheeks can handle anything and everything.
Once Alva has what she needs for the day, the player is free to head back and open up shop anytime. The shop system here is simple: put out your wares, critters will come in and grab what they want, and you’ll cash them out for gold coins. You can use these coins to buy more ingredients and materials to then do it all again the next day. Customers will have different wants and likes, and finding out what they are can lead to tips. Simple fruits can sell, but baked goods do even better, with a variety of jams and cakes being vital to having a healthy customer base. At the same time, these desserts do damage, necessary for later dungeon crawling.
Squirrely Adventures Await
So far, Acornia: Mirror Worlds is incredibly cute and has a fun core gameplay loop. The cartoony visuals help it stand out from its contemporaries, along with the core mechanic of using your precious materials and baked goods to do damage. While the opening that I played was simple, Splashteam says that depth will come with time. Growing your store, hiring employees, finding and making more complex recipes, dungeons – all this will end up being part of Alva’s routine. Acornia: Mirror Worlds has the right ingredients; we’ll see next year how it comes out of the oven.
Acornia: Mirror Worlds is out in 2027 on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and Nintendo Switch 2.
