Backlog Bingo 2025: Later Alligator

I don't find myself having much to say about Later Alligator, but that doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy it. It's just not the kind of thing that's going to leave a super long impression on me, much like Little Kitty Big City from earlier this year: I spent my three-ish hours on it, said "that was super cute!!", recommended it to people who would have a similar experience, and moved on. And it was super cute!

Later Alligator is quite similar to the Professor Layton games in design: you navigate from screen to screen, there are characters on the screen that you can click to play minigames for their MacGuffin, and bapping random points of the screen gives you Coolness Coins™ that you can use elsewhere. You play as an unnamed silent protagonist who is hired by an alligator named Pat who thinks that he's going to be killed by his family that night at an event called only The Event. (It becomes obviously pretty immediately what The Event actually is, but I still won't spoil that here.) You have to walk around and interview everyone in his giant alligator family about what The Event is by beating their specific minigame; this passes time towards The Event, as does failing a minigame or traveling between major city districts.

Because there are more family members than time, you're guaranteed to not have everyone by the time The Event rolls around the first time, but on restarting you can hit up family members you didn't get last time, and the "true ending" is behind finding everyone. The game is made by a company that's an animation studio first and foremost, so the animation and film-noir graphics are absolutely top-notch and charming. Mechanically, the game's...fine? Some of the minigames are fun, some are kinda just there, a couple are really annoying. (So, it's a game with Layton DNA, then.)

If you're playing this, it's probably because you really love the aesthetic. I can't see literally anyone coming away from this with a take like "yeah that game ruled but it was so ugly", the characters and writing and animation are at the forefront here for sure. But I'd rather have played this than another Layton game, because the aesthetics and vibe felt a bit fresher than had I done that. So, yeah, I liked it! I just don't have much more to say than that.

Oh, well, one of the characters is literally alligator Neil Cicierega so there's that.