In the Steps of the Blackfoot

In the Steps of the Blackfoot is a game by one of the few who use ika/sphere, SDHawk. He is part of an unfortunate dying breed if you ask me (koff... koff...please carry on their legacy...). At first glance you can tell from the screenshots that this is no ordinary game, as it is coded in the sphere engine.

The story follows a pirate on his quest to score some awesome new boots. It's unclear on how the shrooms come in but basically ships are built with the soul and pride of mushrooms. The game goes through several phases in a way that you could call it a "RPG/Puzzle/Action thingy". First you must collect mushrooms in a series of block pushing puzzles, second you must assemble your ship in a tetris like manner (or w/e you call that puzzle where you match 3 color blocks), third you must battle pirates using your mushrooms as both armor and ammunition in a very Wild Guns esque manner.



The mushroom collection is the exploration side of the game where you must push blocks and make your way to obtain precious resources.

This is probably my favourite part of the game as it is very rewarding to push through blocks and making your way to other areas. The block pushing is simple at first, but when you reach other islands there are rock connected switches that make the mushroom collecting a little more challenging. The whole point to this is much like buying equips in a regular RPG except you have to work for it.

After you have collected your precious shrooms (and have not used them for 1ups or drug abuse... HEH) you are now ready to tetris it up. You are required to arrange your mushrooms in a manner that allows you to get 3 in the row depending on the colors. The more 3 in a row mushrooms you have, the stronger your ship's defense is.


sheeeeeet dawg, you can't touch this amazing mushroom arrangement...just pretend that far right blue mushroom isn't there.

After your ship is built, you must explore the seven seas to fight other pirates who have mushroom ships. The combat is probably the weakest part of the game, a shame since the game's progression depends on it. The battle has you taking turns with the enemy throwing mushrooms at each others ships. The idea is to shoot a mushroom opposite of its color (for example if you have a red loaded, you must try to shoot a blue mushroom out) to do maximum damage. It's never really clear if you've done damage or not and there seems to be a lot of behind the scenes stuff that I'm not aware of. The aiming is very spastic, you are basically wrestling with a reticle to land on the desired color. I feel it could be more satisfying if you got to aim freely and have the ship itself move around rather than finnicky movement.


This is harder than it looks.

Another thing I would like to point out, it is very hard to understand which ship you are since the ships look exactly the same besides the mushroom placement. It would have been easier to tell the difference if the ships were varied in style at least between the player and the enemy.

Since the game is very much focused on the mechanics, basic novel-like writing was used to tell the story in favor of complicated cutscenes. It works very well for a pirate/exploration and the writing is entertaining. I think there could have been basic illustrations in a children's picture book fashion to remove the monotony of "text over a black screen." But that is just a minor note.


The writing in this game is competent and sets an adventurous tone.

Overall I liked this game, but I could not get farther due to some of the confusion I had with the game mechanics and how uninuitive the battles were. It is an RPG with the puzzles replacing the grinding. So there was a clear attempt to break free of a lot of RPG gameplay tropes and I appreciate that fully. However as it stands I could not enjoy the game, for its execution needs a lot of work. Check it out only if you want to see something different.