Now, for tasks that involve procurement of certain types of items, you'll use your little critter friend to help you out. For instance, to grab the fruits from the trees, you'll click on the fruit, but your critter will climb the tree and shake the branch, causing the fruit to drop to the ground. Only then will you be able to pick it up. Similarly, you'll need to dig up various items, and the critter does the digging for you as well.

Even more intriguing, your critter has an always-on display of its personal stats that represent the current level of its abilities. For instance, there is a bar that represents how high it can climb, and every time you get it to climb a tree, the bar fills up a bit more. When it's completely full, your critter is able to climb higher. Likewise, the more it digs, the harder the mound it can dig up.

Another ability your pet exhibits is the way it can charm other critters into dropping items you need. To do this, simply click and hold on another critter (there are a bunch of them about), and a bar starts to fill up while little cartoon hearts fly out from the critter's head. Once the bar is full, the critter leaves an item behind and your pet raises his charm stat. What else can your li'l guy do? I hesitate to even conjecture.

Other tasks you're called upon to perform include baking pies for others, sewing clothing, growing flowers, fetching items, and probably eventually massaging someone's feet. Honestly, the mundane and menial nature of the tasks the inhabitants of Wandering Willows ask you to perform makes the whole thing feel like they're either grooming you for slavery or some kind of pyramid scheme.

But perhaps the greatest strength of Wandering Willows is the fact that it's a completionist's dream game. I tend to fail quite seriously at most RTS games because I can't tear myself away from watching a structure build to actually play the game. I'm all about the pleasure gained from completion. So, being set a simple task, being able to complete it simply, and receiving a nice little ding once the parameters have been met just rubs me the right way. There is a lot of tiny tasks to perform, and I get that jolt to the pleasure center every single time. I don't claim to understand it, I just enjoy it.

And there you have it. The Wandering Willows demo is available on Big Download for both Mac and PC. Enjoy it for what it is!