Push!

PUSH!
Puzzle Game for RPGMaker 2000

DOCTOR EIN YO PHATNZ

Amount Played:
Completed. Twice. It's great, man.
Gameplay to Story Ratio:
Skewed almost entirely to gameplay. There are scenes every eleven puzzles consisting of an enlarged sprite and four lines of dialogue.
Legality:
Uncertain. All of the graphics are custom-made or open license. Not sure about the music, but I've never heard 'em before.

Description:
It's Picross. You have a numbered grid and a chisel, and you reveal various pictures. It's all really simple and laid back.



Gameplay


Learning Curve: 8/10
This is an absurdly easy game to pick up and play. The mechanics are extremely simple on the surface, like any good puzzler. The tutorial is clear on how to work your way around a puzzle, in terms of both controls and strategy. There is very little down time between puzzles

Mechanics: 9/10
You have a grid, with numbers down the side showing how many squares in that line are to be marked. A five, for instance, indicates that five boxes in a row are to be marked. If more than one number is present, at least one space is left between each string of boxes. So a row marked "2, 3" would have two boxes in a row, then at least one empty space, and then three boxes in a row. It's all very simple on paper.

As for controls, the confirm key chisels out a box. Cancel will mark an empty square with an "X", allowing you to eliminate possibilities in a similar manner to a logic grid. Pressing the cancel key again clears all marks on that square.

Balance: 9/10

The mechanics may be simple, but the implementation is satisfyingly complex. There is a time limit, generally 20 minutes or something ridiculous. Most puzzles won't take a competent player five minutes, after all. Now, the kicker is that the time limit doubles as your health. Each error you make results in an immediate time penalty. This penalty starts at 1 minute deducted from the clock; each successive error doubles the penalty. Things can get rather hairy when you have 5 minutes on the clock and no idea whether the last check goes on the left or right end of the row.

Most of the early puzzles are rather easy; giving obvious hints such as a row of ten checks on a 10 x 10 grid, or the like. Later puzzles get more devious, requiring you to make strategically placed sacrifices in order to find out how things fit together. Progression feels steady, no real spikes in difficulty that don't come directly from doing the puzzles out of order.



Narrative

This is some deep and philosophical shit right here.




Aesthetics


Graphics 7/10
All custom. And it's all adorable.

You will be seeing a lot of the same old same old in this game. Same old menu, same old stone tablet, same old hammer, same old load screen. The graphics have a definite charm to them, don't get me wrong, they just grow stale over extended play.

Audio: 7/10
There's not much to this section. An array of catchy elevator music accompanies the puzzles and menus. There's a good variety, meaning the audio remains fresh throughout the game.

Interface: 6/10
The menu, as seen above, is probably the most graphically stimulating thing in the game. That said, it's clean and simple. Sometimes the direction from your current selection to your destination is not the direction you need to press to get there, but for the most part the menus function fine.



Overall Score