Cutie Pets Pick Berries Review - Screenshot 1 of 3

Cutie Pets Pick Berries is a far more innocent game than its smouldering mandeer hunks might have you believe. Sure, they'll be up there posing on your tv screen the entire time you play the game, but this isn't anything like Bubble Bath Babes or Peek a Boo Poker - don't expect some sort of saucy, torrid forest affair. Just expect to mix and match some berries to feed a cheerful buck, an action that can be surprisingly entertaining despite its simplicity. Just not for very long.

In Cutie Pets Pick Berries you have to use the stylus to connect groups of similar berries. There are four different types, most of which will all be grouped close to each other, and you have a few seconds to touch all of the berries of the same type without lifting the stylus. If you connect all the berries to each other you gain a little bit of time back and continue on to the next round; the game's all over once you finally run out of time, which doesn't take very long.

Cutie Pets Pick Berries Review - Screenshot 2 of 3

That short time limit really works well with the game's basic mechanic. Sure, most of the berries are in groups that are very easy to connect, but even having a single berry in an outlying position, slowing you down for just a second, can cost you the game. Mistakes are simple to fix by just tapping on another berry and starting over, but there is rarely time to make more than a mistake or two before you lose. If you do mess up, you'd better hope you have a few perfect rounds after that to build up time again.

If you can hold out for a long time you'll unlock Miiverse stamps. These are all in keeping with the game's art style, offering you some opportunities to add more buff mandeer to your comments in Miiverse. They're the best part of the game, but you're going to be spending a long, long time unlocking them. They require some particularly high scores and a lot of play time to get, and given how quickly you can fail it'll take a lot of practice before you get them.

If high scores are your thing this does have a points system, giving you one point per board of berries cleared. You get a few extra points for grabbing a wild berry (it matches any berry), and there is a multiplier if you can connect every single group without ever lifting the stylus, so you can challenge yourself by beating your own high scores. It's a little something that might interest some, but unless you're a diehard fan of matching berries it's not much to compel you to keep playing.

Cutie Pets Pick Berries Review - Screenshot 3 of 3

After seeing these ridiculous mandeer on the screen for so long, it almost feels like a waste that they're not featured more in the game. There's only one static screen of them that goes up on the tv as you play (the gameplay all takes place on the GamePad) and the Miiverse stamps. That's it. They're not featured in any other way in the game.

Even some sort of splash screen when you reach a set score, or after you've cleared enough boards, would have been nice. Just feature them doing something absurd like playing beach volleyball, or anything. It's the image of those two bucks that have been drawing attention to the game, so it's rather puzzling that it does absolutely nothing with them. It's a dang shame.

Conclusion

Cutie Pets Pick Berries will not cure your fever for muscular wildlife, but it will give players a fun little diversion for a little while and some fun Miiverse stamps to use. Beyond that, the simple berry-matching game doesn't seem like much of a reason to keep playing, and feels better suited as a mobile game you'd play while messing around on the bus. Maybe with a few more gameplay quirks or some use of its visual theme it could have been more interesting, but as it is there's not much to keep players there - it's fun and plays well, but doesn't offer much.