Kiddos Puzzcade 1.1

Kiddos Puzzcade is a pimpin' puzzle game created by Grettgor. It's super short, and it revolves around the mechanic of switching between 4 characters who each have different abilities:

• JACK, the dude who can move boulders due to his huge muscles.

• ANNE, the gal who can jump real high and dunk hoops. She can also hit switches that are real high.

• RUSSELL, a dude who played with firecrackers too much, so now he likes to blow up some cracked boulders.

• MARIE, a girl who has a... cellphone. But this is useful because it means, if it's really dark, you can see your way through if you're within a certain radius of her.

The X key is used to switch between these characters, and their powers are either activated automatically or by using the normal interact button... "Z" or "SPACE BAR" or "ENTER" or whatever you use.

The game starts off by introducing these four folks entering an old decrepit mansion, who egg each other on for being "wimps", as is stereotypical in the horror genre. Basic haunted mansion shtick. Facesets would've been nice, because it's hard to know who's speaking at any one time. Would've added a WHOLE LOT more personality to these characters. But that doesn't really matter, since the bulk of the experience is in the puzzles themselves - the story itself is rather thin.

So as soon as they enter the mansion, leaves "close in around them" with no explanation as to why. This is not explained either... neither is the mansion implied to be magical at any point. So that didn't make sense to me, and it felt a little lazy, to be honest, as a way of trapping these guys in without a real reason why. As I've said, story isn't the main focus of this game, so it's forgivable.



There's interesting systems implemented in this game - switches that you can push boulders on top of, and objects that only certain characters can interact with, because they have powers to obliterate these obstacles. However, the first few stages are a bit too rudimentary and they don't necessarily require all the characters in order to complete. For instance, STAGE 1 only requires 3 heroes to complete, and STAGE 2 only requires 2 characters. One of the things I value most in a puzzle game is the idea that solutions should be efficient, and *feel* good to complete, but if there are unnecessary elements, like useless heroes and boulders littering the playing field, then it doesn't feel elegant.

However, once all the characters' powers are introduced one by one, they start building on each other in interesting ways, causing the need for teamwork in this unit. One of my complaints about the switching system is that it only goes one way, which makes switching between characters all the time kind of a pain. In crowded spaces, it also becomes a problem to walk past your own characters, since the hallways are so narrow. After a while, though, this mechanic is tested to see if you can maneuver your characters around each other deftly.

STAGE 4 had a nice combination of powers, and STAGE 5 used different characters deftly as well. By STAGE 5, I was hoping that the BGM would change, since the one that was playing was becoming a bit grating on the ears. While STAGE 6 was quite rudimentary, a genius stroke involved requiring several players to get in place to push an object, which I thought was quite the clever idea to try.

There's a torch puzzle later on which is quite stereotypical of average puzzle games. For those of you who haven't played this game yet, it's the type of puzzle where, if you step on a plate, then it will toggle on/off several tiles, and your goal is to push all of these tiles down at the end. This type of puzzle might be easy to implement, but it's also overdone. I don't think it tests skills in a very innovative way, and it can become trial-and-error after a while. I hope this kind of puzzle in games dies after a while, along with the slide puzzle (pleeeeease don't use a slide puzzle in your game) and the ice puzzle (unless you're going to put a twist on it, avoid!).

Those with bad eyesight may find the final puzzle difficult, as the screen slowly gets darker over time, however I liked its innovative spin on the usual "time-bounded puzzle".

The game records your total time to complete. What was mine? 726.9s, apparently. I don't know if that's good or bad, but I do know that I enjoyed most of those seconds, in this decent conundrum with a cute ending and logical usage of the control of multiple characters by switching between 'em.

I give this solid prototypical puzzler a 3/5.