Ittle Dew was once pitched to Nintendo as a Zelda game and while the idea didn’t stick, that didn’t make the Swedish studio Ludosity hide its influences, instead it wears them like a badge of honor.

Thinking it’s a Zelda clone might throw you off though, you might expect Zelda-like combat or multi-layered dungeons with all sorts of puzzles, but what Ittle Dew really is, is a block-pushing puzzle game. You fight some enemies along the way, but it’s not very enjoyable and you explore an overworld and dungeons, but usually all you want to do is to put blocks on tops of switches. For that you’ll push, freeze, destroy and teleport blocks, enemies and yourself with the aid of four items you acquire throughout the game with the money you find in the main dungeon.

These puzzles can get really tough to figure out, even if you have been pushing blocks since you were old enough to hold a controller. Things start of simple enough obviously, but it does not take long until you’re restarting a room over and over again (thanks to the handy option to retry a room without going in and out) to figure out just how you can put those slippery ice blocks where you want them or how to teleport yourself to the right spot.

There are some genuine “oh that’s clever!” moments, especially with the teleportation rod, but there are also some bad eggs where the solution is a bit convoluted or awkward to pull off.
The thing is, we’ve seen it all before, time and time again we pushed blocks and cursed the person who thought of freezing them and while that does not mean they should be banned forever, going from one derivative block puzzle to another gets old fast.

Even if it looks like a cross between A Link to the Past and Wind Waker, Ittle Dew is not without its artistic merits: the clean, colorful hand-drawn look suits the game well and the character designs are really good, the shaky outlines à la Yoshi’s Island help give it a bit of life, which is welcome since the levels are pretty bland.

To go with those great designs comes some very charming and funny dialogue, ripe with Zelda references, self-awareness and good old silliness. Without bombarding us with text, the game succeeds in creating likeable characters: Ittle Dew is a straightforward girl that just wants to solve puzzles, get treasure and hit stuff and Tippsie is your fairy fox (I think) companion that, as you might have guessed from the name, gives you tips, although his unhealthy “health potion” addiction might get in the way of that. The enemies are also delightfully characterized and you can collect some Pokémon-like trading cards with hilarious descriptions of the characters, although being rewarded a card after spending ages solving a puzzle can be annoying.

If you like puzzle games and aren’t bored to death of pushing blocks, there are about 5 hours worth (or more if you want to do speed runs) of challenging puzzles in Ittle Dew and it doesn’t hurt that it’s pretty, has some really good tunes and humorous writing. On the other hand, if you have recurring nightmares about having to solve a complicated puzzle with ice blocks just to get inside your house, you might want to skip it.