A game called Adorable Adventures comes with a certain level of expectation. It’s a simple title, but it promises two key things – adorableness and adventure. I played the demo a little while back, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Whether it’s an adventure game like Stray or a sandbox game like Untitled Goose Game and Goat Simulator, I’m a sucker for any game that allows you to play as an animal, so needless to say, Adorable Adventures was always going to be right up my street.
An Adorable Adventure
I think one of the first things that you need to know is that this game certainly lives up to its name. From the moment he first showed up on my screen and graced me with the cutest yawn I’ve ever seen, I fell in love with protagonist Boris, a loveable baby boar who needs to reunite with his family after a forest fire.
Little Boris finds his mother fairly quickly, but she’s trapped in a shed. Baby boars are strong, but Boris can’t break through the shed door by himself, so he needs to gather up his siblings to launch a heroic rescue mission.
Boris can’t speak, of course, so Max, the local forest guard, narrates the story and records Boris’s journey and objectives in a journal. This is how you track your objectives as you explore the park.
Cuteness Overload
I’m not exaggerating, but Adorable Adventures is one of the cutest, most heartwarming video games I’ve played in a long time, and a lot of that is down to its presentation. It sounds great. There’s a calming instrumental going on in the background, which I really liked, but where the game really shines is in how it incorporates the ambient sound of nature. There’s the sound of insects chirping, foliage rustling, and my personal favourite: the sound of Boris’s little snorts and his hooves hitting the ground.
Then there are the graphics. The park itself looks pretty good. The environment was lovely in a wild nature reserve sort of way, but again, my favourite part was Boris. I loved his animations; from the way he skids when running to the way he plops down onto his butt when he stays idle for too long.
My only real problem was that I experienced some screen tearing on the PS5, and the game offered very limited graphical settings to play around with.
Follow Your Nose
The main gameplay mechanic in Adorable Adventures revolves around a boar’s impressive ability to track a scent. Boris has a powerful nose, which he can use to find his siblings. The only problem is that Boris is young, and his sense of smell hasn’t fully developed yet. It can get distracted by other strong smells, like flowers, rubbish, and footballs.
To focus on the scent he wants to follow, Boris needs to ignore the other scents by smelling them enough that they no longer bother him. Boris needs to investigate most things a set number of times before he can ignore them. If you opt to investigate a few more times to mark the scent as complete, you often unlock a cute little flower that Boris can wear because, apparently, he wasn’t adorable enough.
Scents show up on the screen in different colours. You can track these scents in the menu, where you can also turn off any scents that you want to ignore, as long as you’re familiar enough with them to do so.
I really enjoyed the scent mechanic. It reminded me a lot of the “Smellovision” from Dog’s Life – a game I used to love as a kid. I found it really relaxing too. It didn’t require much thought, which is perfect for a cosy game like this.
Reunite with Your Siblings
There’s only so much Boris can do alone. The map is bigger than I expected, with different environments being home to different plants. New areas are often boarded up, though, and whilst Boris can bash down some of these barriers by himself, others require a set number of his siblings to be present. I liked this mechanic because it gave the game structure. It wasn’t as simple as just finding his siblings, though. There were often complications. One sibling was lazy, so he required a special root to perk him up before he’d come with Boris, while another was depressed by lingering fires and wouldn’t join until Boris had put them out. Poor Boris has some pretty demanding siblings – he seems to be doing all the hard work, but I enjoyed that finding his siblings involved multiple steps.
Finding his siblings and rescuing his mother is the main objective, but Boris is young, and there are plenty of opportunities for him to have fun throughout his adventure. I’ve already mentioned that you can complete his scent diary, but there are also some races, hidden secrets, and photo challenges to complete. I found the photo challenges to be quite tricky. Essentially, you’ll find photo cards around the map, which you have to recreate with one of the cameras you come across. I found that even when you find the right area, getting the right angle is pretty difficult, but I did get a real sense of triumph when I got one.
Final Thoughts
If I had to sum Adorable Adventures up in only a handful of words, it would be short and sweet. It only took me around four hours to complete the story, all of the races, and the scent journal. You could definitely complete it in less time if you didn’t bother with any of the optional tasks, and I imagine you could add on another couple of hours if you wanted to complete the photo challenges. I was so hooked that I actually completed the game in one sitting. It’s definitely one to check out if you’re an animal lover and a fan of cosy games.
Developer: Wild Sheep Studios
Publisher: PQube
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Release Date: 30th April 2026
