Video Game / Little Goody Two Shoes

The secret lies in the woods...

Little Goody Two Shoes is an adventure horror RPG developed by AstralShift and published by Square Enix Collective as the prequel to Pocket Mirror, with an artstyle modeled after Shoujo anime and the addition of yuri. The game follows a young girl named Elise, who dreams of rising above her circumstances and becoming fabulously wealthy. Having grown up in the village of Kieferberg with her childhood friends Freya (an errand girl) and Lebkuchen (a nun at the local church), she feels trapped having to work as a fellow errand girl for superstitious townsfolk. One Sunday, she meets Rozenmarine, a strange purple-haired pagan girl, and decides to take her in as her maid.

This act soon causes her to learn of a wish granter in the Woodlands, who can make the dreams of anyone come true as long as they bring Him the necessary gifts. Entranced, Elise sees the opportunity to finally achieve the life she has always wanted. But just as she learns of this, horror strikes. As strange occurrences sweep through Kieferberg, with the townsfolk becoming increasingly convinced a witch is responsible, Elise must battle suspicion, survive the occult, and determine how far she is willing to go for her own happiness... all while being watched by Him and His subordinates, who are causing the disasters for their own sinister purposes.

Despite being a prequel to Pocket Mirror, Little Goody Two Shoes has a very different approach to gameplay. Rather than the usual “explore and escape the haunted location” typical of Explorer Horror, the game takes place across one week, with each day split into six sections, and in most of them Elise will spend her days traveling around the town, completing missions to move the plot. Borrowing a bit more from Survival Horror, Elise has three meters — health, stamina, and sanity — which she must manage with items; if any one of these three are depleted, it's Game Over. To earn the money needed to buy the items and pass certain time periods, Elise must do tasks, taking the form of minigames, to help the townsfolk. She must also avoid raising the suspicion of the townsfolk by answering their questions in the correct manner; if her suspicion gets too high, she will be accused of being the witch and meet a terrible end. In between, she can go on dates with any of the three romanceable heroines (Rozenmarine, Freya, and Lebkuchen), earning hearts for each date if she picks the right options. The sixth and final section of each day, the Witching Hour, transitions into the gameplay more reminiscent of its predecessor, as Elise must navigate a surreal area and its tricks and traps to reach the end.

The game was released on the Nintendo Switch, PC (via Steam), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series on October 31st, 2023.

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Little Goody Two Shoes contains examples of:

• Accidental Misnaming: Elise is quite bad at remembering Rozenmarine's name, though unlike with Muffy it doesn't seem to be intentional. If Pocket Mirror is any indication, she continued to do so as an adult. She gets it right exactly twice. First is during the concluding date, and the second is exclusive to Ending 5.
• Art-Style Dissonance: The cutesy 1990s art style, inspired by classic shoujo anime and fairy tales, contrasts with the horror and tragedy elements of Elise's journey.
• Book Ends: One of the two first jobs/minigames Elise can do is “It’s Raining Apples”, and an altered version of it serves as the last minigame and effective Final Boss fight against Aziel.
• Bucket Booby-Trap: On Sunday morning, Jakob and Apfel discuss doing this to Miss Wilma, the Mean Boss of the local inn and overall unpleasant woman. Elise questions how they are going to pull it off stealthily, and they have no real answer, but she also admits to herself she would love to see it. They settle for putting branches in her shed instead, and it gets the desired reaction of freaking out.
• Climax Boss: The Aventesma on Friday is the boss of the penultimate dungeon and a tough battle where Elise’s chosen love interest is kidnapped and she has to fight to save her, complete with a Pop Quiz where Elise has to prove her love.
• Continuity Nod: As a prequel to Pocket Mirror.
  • In Fleta's realm, there's a pink door with the word "Mutter" on it, representing Elise. Said door appears again in Elise's "I Want" Song.
  • The eponymous pocket mirror is revealed to be a Protection Charm given by an adult Lebkuchen.
• Cross-Popping Veins: The classic symbol will appear on characters' portraits, namely Elise's, whenever they get irritated.
• Deal with the Devil:
  • As the events of Pocket Mirror take place after this game, Elise is likely to be tempted into making the deal for power and wealth she did in the backstory of that game.
  • Elise is implied to be the result of one of these herself.
• Don't Go in the Woods: Subverted in the tagline of the game, but very much played straight in the game itself.
• Doorstop Baby: Well, more a forest baby in this case, as according to the narration at the beginning of the game, the infant Elise was found alone in the woods. Later, it's revealed she is the result of Grandma Holle making a deal with the Strange Boy.
• Dying Town: Kieferberg is stated to be a shadow of the bustling town it once was, with quite a few villagers having moved to other places like Primeldorf, and the subsequent events like the literal Witch Hunt drive a few more (like Eugen) to pack up and leave as well. The town proves to be surprisingly resilient, however, likely outlasting Elise herself in the Pocket Mirror timeline. Also subverted in Ending 7, where Elise and Lebkuchen manage to turn around Kieferberg's decline as its new community leaders.
  Elise: (This town will be deserted before long, that’s true... It’s already so empty compared to when I was young...)
• Earn Your Happy Ending: It will be difficult and the path may be horrifying, but Elise has a chance to do this. And it's not by taking the Strange Boy's deal. If she decides she doesn't want to risk her love interest by bringing them to the Strange Boy's realm, she can live a happier and more fulfilling life with them.
• Food as Bribe: Muffy's willing to stay silent about Elise's more suspicious activities and affiliations...provided she's willing to fulfill her food requests.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Grandma Holle sacrificing her husband for the sake of her wish foreshadows Elise's later actions.
  • Early in the game, Elise has a nightmare of Rozenmarine possessed by the Old Hag. Which ends up happening again in Ending 8, this time with deadly consequences.
  • Elise's fifth date with Rozenmarine takes place near the town windmill, with the monumental castle that Elise always fantasized about looming over the girls. Given how the castle stands for Elise's foolhardy desires as well as her preordained destiny to become a countess, it shows how Elise and Rozenmarine's love is heavily overshadowed by their shared tragic fate.
• Foregone Conclusion: Averted broadly by nature of there being multiple endings, but played straight in the Moira ending, where Elise plays out the exact scenario that will lead into Pocket Mirror. Even worse is that this is the ending Rozenmarine predicted.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: Elise must choose between taking the deal offered by the Strange Boy to sacrifice the one she loves to him for the riches she's always wanted, or leaving it and living humbly with the one she loves. Moreover, she must choose this before she enters the Strange Boy's realm, or he will kill Elise for backing out of a deal she's started.
• Gory Discretion Shot: In the first three endings, the chosen love interest getting Eaten Alive by the demons is not shown; instead we see an image of Elise in a pose of utter despair as she is Forced to Watch.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: If Elise has satisfied the conditions of the Strange Boy's summoning and has brought her love interest directly to him, Elise can try to back out of the deal upon realizing that accepting it will forfeit the life of her lover. The Strange Boy kills her for this, mocking her for lacking the resolve to follow through so close to the end.
• Inciting Incident: Elise's fateful encounter with Rozenmarine, who was seeking shelter in her granary. It kicks off the plot in more than one way, by drastically heightening the townsfolk's suspicion of Elise, and by introducing a character who could provide necessary information on the Trials and Gifts. It is later revealed that Ozzy, in the guise of Flocke, had led Rozenmarine to Elise's home with the intention of having her serve as Elise's guide throughout the Trials, and a possible sacrifice as the Good Company.
• In Spite of a Nail: All three bad endings for each girl's route leads to similar results. Elise sacrifices them to fulfil her wish. After their sacrifice, Roman arrives, and she is taken away to a faraway place where she now has all the wealth and power she desires. Despite her determination to not give birth to a second child, fate wouldn't allow it, and she'll always have twins, and the demon boy will come for her. The only note worthy difference is that in Rozenmarine's route, she acquires the pocket mirror at the end.
• Interface Spoiler: The suspicion mechanic's existence is revealed far before the townspeople have any real reason to suspect Elise of being magical in nature.
• Late to the Tragedy: The interactions with multiple Golden Maidens from different time periods, plus the mysterious notes that describe Granny Holle's dying confession, imply that Elise is merely the latest mark in a demonic scheme that has been going on for centuries - and as the ending canonical to Pocket Mirror shows, she wouldn't be the last.
• Lipstick Lesbian: All of Elise's romantic interests are female.
• Malicious Misnaming: Elise displays her contempt for Muffy by calling her by multiple wrong names within the same conversation.
  • Other characters have similar difficulty keeping Muffy's name straight as a running gag.
• Multiple Endings: The game has several potential endings based on Elise's choices.
  • Ending 1 - Moira: If Elise gets all three testaments and chooses Rozenmarine, the latter is killed by the Strange Boy. Rozenmarine greets her fate with unhinged enthusiasm, but dies screaming in pain and calling out for her dead grandmother. Elise's wish becomes true and Roman is bewitched into loving and marrying her, but she can't enjoy her newfound fortune, due to her guilt and the knowledge that the Strange Boy will target her daughter Goldia. Years later, Elise visits Lebkuchen, who gives her the pocket mirror, which will be used as a protection charm for Goldia in the future. According to Word of God, this is the ending canon to Pocket Mirror.
  • Ending 2 - Treacherous Rose: If Elise gets all three testaments and chooses Freya, the latter is killed by the Strange Boy. Freya is crying in confusion and despair in her final moments. Elise's wish becomes true and Roman is bewitched into loving and marrying her, but she can't enjoy her newfound fortune, due to her guilt and the knowledge that the Strange Boy will target her daughter Goldia. Years later, Elise visits her old village, where Gustav had erected a tomb for Freya and Elise.
  • Ending 3 - Judas' Kiss: If Elise gets all three testaments and chooses Lebkuchen, the latter is killed by the Strange Boy. Lebkuchen goes from screaming for help to her cursing Elise in her final moments. Elise's wish becomes true and Roman is bewitched into loving and marrying her, but she can't enjoy her newfound fortune, due to her guilt and the knowledge that the Strange Boy will target her daughter Goldia. Years later, Elise takes refuge in a monastery, hoping for a chance of redemption. When she dies, she's reunited with a forgiving Lebkuchen.
  • Ending 4 - Apostasy: If Elise discovers what Father Hans has been up to, she's captured by Saint Walpurga who subjects her to a Demonic Possession. She leaves the village, also leaving the red shoes behind.
  • Ending 5 - Star-crossed: If Elise has enough love points with Rozenmarine and chooses not to go to the Strange Boy's domain, Elise gives up on her wish for riches out of her love for Rozenmarine. This convinces the latter that maybe not everything is predestined. She leaves the village, promising to Elise that she will return to her someday. It takes a few years, but she keeps her word, and is ready to settle down with Elise for good.
  • Ending 6 - Grape Jewel: If Elise has enough love points with Freya and chooses not to go to the Strange Boy's domain, the two girls leave the village, in order to fullfill the latter's dream to become a seamstress. After a couple years working as maids; the two achieve this, opening a store, and are in a loving relationship.
  • Ending 7 - Bells of Dawn: If Elise has enough love points with Lebkuchen and chooses not to go to the Strange Boy's domain, the two girls travel from city to city before returning to their village years later. Lebkuchen becomes the new Elder while Elise becomes the Mayor.
  • Ending 8 - The Kiss: If Elise goes to the festival with Rozenmarine but doesn't have enough love points, Rozenmarine is possessed by Saint Walpurga and captures Elise. The two are forcefully transformed into a tree.
  • Ending 9 - Auto-Da-Fe: If Elise placed the third offering incorrectly (but the first two correctly), she is burned at the stake by the angry villagers.
  • Ending 10 - Motherly Cocoon: If she places either of the first two offerings incorrectly, she's captured by Saint Walpurga who subjects her to a Demonic Possession.
• No Canon for the Wicked: Averted. None of the three Good Endings, in which Elise lives a happy life with her chosen Love Interest, are canon to Pocket Mirror; instead, the canon ending, Moira, that leads to the original game is the one where Elise chooses Rozenmarine only to (reluctantly) sacrifice her to Ozzy, ending up in a miserable marriage with a wealthy man while Rozenmarine becomes a Golden Maiden bound to Ozzy forever.
• Non-Standard Game Over: There are a couple of them:
  • While letting the other three meters run out gives you a brief scene and a Game Over screen, letting your suspicion max out instead leads to a pseudo-ending where the villagers tie Elise and Rozenmarine up under suspicion of witchcraft, leading to Elise getting killed by Walpurga.
  • If Elise reaches the end of the final dungeon and chooses to sacrifice herself to save her love interest, then she gets eaten and turned into a Golden Maiden.
• Not Quite the Right Thing: When Elise has summoned the Strange Boy and brought her love interest to his realm, she eventually has the realization that granting her wish means sacrificing the girl Elise loves. If Elise speaks up to try and stop the ritual, the Strange Boy kills her for lacking the resolve to follow through on her deal in a Non-Standard Game Over. To actually save her love interest, Elise has to recognize going into the Strange Boy's realm is putting her girlfriend in danger, and refuse to even enter.
• Nuns Are Mikos: An interesting case of this seemingly being done deliberately as part of the game's aesthetic, despite the primary developers being Portuguese and a mix of American and other European members (and thus technically "knowing better"). Lebkuchen fits the trope to an absolute T, being referred to as a "nun" but being primarily an assistant to Father Hans, being a bit loose with her faith in the main timeframe of the game, having what are implied to be inborn powers of intuition and nigh-divination, and typically wearing a garb that is more "nun-inspired" than an actual habit. And it's implied that jobs similar to Lebkuchen's are fairly common in the game's world.
• Official Couple: While Elise has multiple romance partners to pursue in the game, Pocket Mirror established Rozenmarine to be her canonical love. As while the initial fates of the other routes also ends up with her marrying Roman and giving birth to the twins in the sequel, only in Rozenmarine's route does she receive the pocket mirror at the end.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • Since the Witching Hour dungeons are all one-time only, anything you fail to get visiting there will be lost for that playthrough, including any Golden Maidens.
  • If you don’t visit the well cavern and get the Old Catacombs Key by Friday Dusk, you will not be able to get Ending 4 as you will lack the item needed to access it.
• Polite Villains, Rude Heroes: Elise Liedl, for a given definition of hero, is an arrogant, bluntly honest, and Hot-Blooded village girl who's first instinct in a disagreement is to hit back as hard as she can, which causes her problems with her fellow villagers, but she also risks her life to save a kidnapped boy and her chosen love interest, and can develop to overcome her flaws. The demon aristocrats and the witch haunting Kieferberg are posh and polite, but are also ravenous, greedy entities who eat people. This is often shown when Elise speaks directly to them, and the demons speak with manners while Elise openly insults them.
• The Power of Love: Pretty much the only thing keeping Elise's insatiable Greed and ambition tethered is her feelings towards the girl she loves. And if you have a high enough heart rating with them, she can reject going through with the ritual; leading to a much more happy ending for everyone, and hence preventing the events of Pocket Mirror from happening.
• Press X to Die: When the Strange Boy is eating Elise's love interest, the player has the choice to stay quiet or have Elise beg the Strange Boy to stop... to which he immediately kills her for going back on their deal.
• Rags to Riches: Elise desperately wishes to be the subject of this, and openly fantasizes about life in a nearby castle attended to by numerous servants. She achieves this dream in Endings 1-3, but at the cost of losing any chance of true happiness. However, she does attain a more modest and realistic version of this in Ending 6, where she opens a promising dressmaking business with Freya, or in Ending 7, where she becomes Kieferberg's community leader alongside Lebkuchen.
• Raster Vision: As noted below, one of the game's main Retraux visual effects is a shader which gives the entire screen an effect similar to the blurring and color distortion one typically saw from a cathode-ray tube display of the 1990s (and which was often planned for in a game's art design), just with no artificial scanlines involved and with the game's real target resolution being 1080p+ and with the assets designed to match and displaying in true 24-bit color.
• Relationship Values: There's a subsection of the menu devoted to tracking Elise's relationship with her assorted love interests.
• Retraux:
  • The art style is a mix of 90s anime-styled graphics, painted backgrounds, story book illustrations, and pixel art.
  • Most notably, the game uses a filter-slash-shader which emulates the fuzziness and color blur common to playing a 1990s/early 2000s game of similar graphical style (such as the offerings of Gust, Nippon Ichi or, Stateside, the sort of games Working Designs was famous for) on a cathode-ray tube display that was common during the fifth and sixth console generations. The result ends up feeling like "the greatest Saturn/PS2 game that never existed", utilizing the aesthetic of such games while rendering at a real resolution and color depth, and with environmental effects, that the hardware of that time could never hope to achieve.
  • The intro movie goes even harder on this, as it is rendered in such a way that mirrors the chromatic aberration and minor transfer defects that are common to VHS recordings (albeit only one or two generations deep). It also has a "fuzziness" similar to what was common to standard-definition video, despite the movie being produced in 1080p. It even fades into a 4:3 letterbox toward the end of it, and you can notice a little tracking error at the end of the intro.
  • Notably, the effect goes a little "crazy" during the intro to each Witching Hour segment, and the effect is applied inconsistently on purpose and is mixed with pointedly more modern effects during a number of Woodland Witching Hour dungeons.
• Rewatch Bonus: Rozenmarine's theme song cutscene 'Wild and Wandering Thistle' is full of examples of this trope. The star constellations that 'guide' Rozenmarine towards her ultimate destiny includes representations of the Ruby Red Shoes, Murim the Crow, and Aziel the Serpent, hinting that their influence may be sinister. The entrance to Ozzy's realm also appears in one of the scenes.
• Rule of Symbolism: As explained in a Steam post, the game uses a lot of environmental storytelling with the design to reflect certain ideas. For the examples given, Elise living in a house in the woods, far from the village of Kieferberg, represents her emotional disconnect from the villagers, and the abandoned houses on the way represent her desire to leave and find a new life.
• Sanity Meter: One of several meters you have to keep an eye on if you want Elise to succeed. Witnessing horrific events will drain her sanity, as will some enemy attacks.
• Scenery Porn: The game has a 1990s anime-inspired art style with gorgeous painted backgrounds and multiple locations dedicated solely to showing them off. It's sometimes been described as "the greatest Sega Saturn game that existed in your dreams" (since the assets are far higher quality than a true Saturn could ever hope to display).
• Songs of Solace: The Golden Maidens can be found by the sound of their sorrowful songs of regret and lamentation about how foolish they were to seek out His wishes, not realizing the great price they would pay being their closest loved one and their soul.
• Surreal Horror: The dream scenes and trips into the woods all take place in bizarre, otherworldly environments filled with equally strange creatures, with a distinctly different art style than the rest of the game.
• Too Good to Be True: The whole game resolves around Elise being tempted to uplift herself from isolation and poverty through increasingly unethical means till it culminates in her being required to kill the love of her life. If she goes through with it, she gets the power and money she's been craving her whole life...at the expense of it making her a husk of former-self: feeling alienated by high society, being stuck in a loveless marriage, being absolutely terrified that her children will pay for her mistakes, and haunted by the guilt and remorse of being responsible for her lover's death. However, if Elise chooses to reject the illusion of easy riches and prioritize her soulmate's safety, she ends up living a much happier and fulfilling life with her lover, and may also achieve a more modest version of her original goals of wealth and status through hard work and assistance from her gifted lover.
• Translation Convention: While the game's main version is in English, and Japanese language audio is available (and is the default for the vocal songs), all of the written messages we see in-universe are written in German, with much of the incidental text in the interface and whatnot also being German. Given other aspects of the setting, such as the names all being rendered in German forms where applicable and Pocket Mirror explicitly taking place in Austria, it's safe to assume that, in-universe, everyone is speaking a dialect of German, which is being rendered in English for the sake of the intended audience.
• Walking the Earth: In all of the endings where Elise doesn't sacrifice her love interest to the Strange Boy, she travels the world alongside each ending's respective love interest before the two of them ultimately settle down. In the case with Rozenmarine, the two of them end up travelling independently of each other before reuniting three years later.
• Witch Hunt: A literal example is one of the primary conflicts Elise needs to deal with; some of the villagers, primarily Old Jochen, are convinced that the incidents such as the theft of Eugen’s horses and the destruction of their wheat and water supply are the work of a witch, and Elise has to be careful what she says if she wants to avoid being suspected. On Friday, this culminates in some of the villagers calling to search everyone for the mark of a witch and basically accusing Elise and Rozenmarine, and possibly even Freya or Lebkuchen, of being the witches. Should her suspicion be too high, Elise will get tied up along with Rozenmarine and killed by the witch, and if she is on Freya’s or Lebkuchen’s route and places the third offering wrong, she gets an ending where the expected result happens.
• Wizard Needs Food Badly: Elise's stamina drains whenever there's a passage of time from one phase of the day to the next, and she needs to regularly eat to keep it up.
• World of Technicolor Hair: Broadly averted, since Elise and Freya are brunettes while Lebkuchen has dark blonde hair, but played straight with Rozenmarine, whose hair is purple.
• You Just Told Me: Muffy’s second blackmail attempt on Monday has her demand her pretzel, to which Elise brags about how she fooled everyone into thinking Rozenmarine was her cousin — and thus gives Muffy leverage to demand the pretzel.
  Muffy: "I-I’m telling Father Hans, then - just you wait!"
  Elise: "Good luck with that, Mindy - I’ve already introduced her to everyone myself! Oh, my poor beggar cousin, Rozenmarine! They fell for it - every single one of them!"
  Muffy: "Sh-She’s not your cousin?!"
  Elise: "…!"
  Muffy: "Golly, Elise - even I fell for it!"
  Elise: "No, no, no! You’ve got it all wrong - what I meant was…"
  Muffy: "I-I’d best go let all those f-folks know, huh?! Oh, i-if only you’d give me a pretzel!"
• Yuri Genre: All of Elise's prospective love interests are female. Her marriage to Roman in the endings where she sacrifices her love interest is a scenario that's forced upon her.

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