Twinkleby feels like a combination of Unpacking and Viva Piñata to me. You get to design islands on which you can place houses and design those, but also the outside. While doing that, you also try to attract neighbors who will live on your island. No missable achievements, completion takes around 15 to 20 hours.
Approximate time to 100%: This is totally based on how extreme you go with designing the islands, but I would guess around 15 to 20 hours.
Estimated achievement difficulty: 1/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: I did my best to write a guide, which can be found here:
https://www.missitheachievementhuntress.com/twinkleby-100-ac...Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: Not really, although yeeting 100 neighbors from your island can feel like that, I think it is also needed for finding all those rare neighbors
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: Yes, there is an achievement for an event that takes place between September 23 and October 7 each year.
RNG-achievements: A little bit with finding all the rare neighbors
Does difficulty affect achievements: No difficulty option
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No
Gamepad or mouse and keyboard: Mouse and keyboard
In Twinkleby, you'll be designing islands to attract neighbors, aka NPCs, who will live on your islands. At first, the design part is a bit bare-bones, as you only have a few items, but in no time, you'll have many of them! You can get new items from chests that fall out of the sky every 1 to 4 minutes, as a reward for having met all the conditions of all neighbors, and you can buy them in the shops with stars, which is the currency in this game. I believe there are approximately 300 items, ranging from various stones to tables, books, and portraits, and many more. There are over 55 different item categories.
The developers made designing the island however you want so easy. You have access to every item you have found in each level. So, if you found two tables, you'll have those two tables available to you in each level. Found a third, then you have three tables in each level. Your stock of items is allocated for each level. And many items you can place in multiple ways. Found some spoons? You can put them on top of a surface or on the ground. Want them hanging on the wall? Also possible. For many items it is also possible to change the colors.
I have told this story before in other reviews (for example, in my House Flipper review), but as a child I loved to draw a map of a house and then add furniture, etc. I was never good at drawing, but I had a lot of fun making those. Games like Twinkleby help me relive those nostalgic memories and allow me to design without the struggle of having to draw it myself.
If designing the islands, however you want, were the only part, then Twinkleby would already be an excellent game, but it gets so much better! As your designs will attract "neighbors" to come live on your island. Each neighbor has their own preferences to attract them to the island, but also to make them happy. Part of completing levels is fulfilling all their needs. Some are nightowls and are already excited when you turn the time of day into "night", you have lazy neighbors who just want to sit or sleep, hungry ones that want food, artistic ones that want to paint or play music. Many of the neighbors have a combination of those needs. You can see a pictogram of their needs by clicking on them and seeing their progress. The bubble will turn yellow, and when completely fulfilled, it will turn green.
I totally love how they interact with the items you place down! They will eat the food, sleep in the beds, play musical instruments, and wander through the park. It's lovely to see your design come to life! The character designs are also adorable! I really love the whole vibe of Twinkleby. So much passion went into designing each item and providing the player with options through the various color choices.
The only downside to Twinkleby for me is that it doesn't really communicate to you how to attract a specific neighbor to your island. It can be a combination of daytime/weather/season/background of the map, as well as particular items placed on the map. I understand why it is hidden; this way, the community can work together to figure it out. However, with around 300 different items and mostly using many of them on your island, it is hard to pinpoint exactly what made a neighbor appear. However, I wish the collection menu showed some circles with items that attract them, initially hidden, but revealing one of those with each visit. That way, the community still needs to work together, as you need to attract them first, even to get that info, but you know what to communicate to other players. On the one hand, I enjoyed this part of the game, as it reminded me of Viva Piñata; however, later on, with only a few rare neighbors left, it became very frustrating.
A feature that is just an extra but is funny is that to remove neighbors or items, you throw them off your island. The items will return to your inventory after doing so. The neighbor will first cry that you did that to them and then jump of the island using an umbrella as a parachute. Yeeting items/villagers from your island is funnier than just throwing them in a trash can or telling them to leave.
For the achievements in Twinkleby, you have to complete all 10 main islands and the 5 secret islands. Have yeeted 100 neighbors from your island, completing collections of items, and attract all the rare neighbors. That last one is the most challenging as long as we don't know what exactly attracts them, but I did my best to list in my guide (linked above) what I had placed down when they arrived. At some point, I got too frustrated to just have a few items out and switch between seasons and backgrounds, so I threw every single item at the map and can only tell you the other settings. There is also an achievement that you can only unlock a certain time during the year (between 23 September and 7 October), I kinda suspect that the developers are adding more of those in the future.
I give Twinkleby 4 out of 5 stars.
4.0