Submissions

[ChevRage]

The game is a lot tougher than the trailer makes it seem. I played it for a bit earlier this year on the Switch while at a friend's holiday house, since I didn't want to play any of its other games while in handheld mode, and some of the levels were devilishly hard.

The game is basically a block-pushing puzzle game, with the curious twist being that some of the blocks, while set up in a specific orientation, make up the rules that are followed by the sprites in the game. It was a pleasant surprise to me to find out that it doesn't fall in the trappings of other puzzle games that have an interesting premise, which are too easy or simple because the devs couldn't think of ways to further challenge the player beyond the basic concept. There are plenty of traps, where initially I thought I found an easy solution, actually failed the level, or rather, blocked the win condition (which is always achieved by getting onto whatever "IS WIN"). Pushing a button on the controller always undoes a step of any moves made, so it's not like any difficulty can be attributed towards making a mistake and having to re-do the entire level. On top of that, it frequently adds new rules, some of which wildly changed the properties of stuff I took for granted, so I never really got bored during my stint playing it.

The biggest problem however is the presentation. The game just looks so damn lame with its muted colours and general lack of energy. Even the music really feels like it doesn't want to be there after a while. Any random Japanese puzzle game looks so much more vibrant and exciting compared to this. At some point when I started getting really stuck, I found I just couldn't gather the enthusiasm needed to launch the game again. Kinda sucks really, since the premise is so unique, and the puzzles quite satisfying to solve.


★★★☆☆

[icycalm]

I moved this into the Submissions forum because it's really a review and added a 3/5 rating because that's what your verdict sounds like. If you abandon the game with no regrets, it's 2/5, but it doesn't sound like that's the case here.

And yeah, the game looks rotten. It's not just the "muted colours and general lack of energy"; the art is terrible. And of course it has an Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam...

I will post it in the Reviews/Play section when I get to doing the GOTM for March 2019.