Pilo and the Holobook is a casual adventure game where you catalog the universe by scanning everything you see into the Holobook and creating stickers of your finds.  The graphics are colorful and cartoonish, the characters seem charming, and the gameplay is…lacking.  The demo contains the game’s intro and one world, Vast Desert, and took me roughly 30 minutes to complete.  By the end, we had just discovered some poisonous purple substance called the Tar.

In the game’s intro, you are introduced to the basics of the Holobook as you scan in a bunch of objects around the Professor’s garden.  Once you scan in enough objects, you get a Planetary Sticker, which can be earned faster by scanning the objects whose silhouettes can be found in the book.  After this, Pilo and the Professor literally launch their house into space in search of new places to explore.  The rest of the demo is spent in Vast Desert, where the necessary stickers are a bit harder to find, whether they be hidden in the sand or require the solving of basic puzzles to uncover, namely finding some hidden gems using a map.

While the Vast Desert was a step up from the game’s intro, as expected, the puzzling was still pretty light, and I was left wondering how tedious the game could get over time if the main mechanic simply involved running around scanning in objects.  While most reviewers online seemed to enjoy the game, people did say that the game is too short and the worlds are too small, with the desert being the largest (and let me tell you, it wasn’t all that big).  The game’s description did say that the Holobook can gain new abilities, though I’m unsure what these are aside from the ability to repel the Tar.

Pilo and the Holobook is certainly a lovely and charming game, and it seems like a great option for someone looking for a short, but sweet casual game with no combat.  I’m just not sure if the gameplay is a little too light for my liking, plus the game is rather short, as well, and can take roughly 4 hours to complete.  But if this looks like your thing, the game seems to be available on Steam and all modern consoles for $12.99, though I’ve seen it go on sale for $5.99.