Kiddos Puzzcade 1.1

Kiddos Puzzcade is a short puzzle game by Gretgor. It was originally made all the way back in 2008 but has recently found its way to RMN. Boy am I glad it did, because this is a short and sweet collection of puzzles, even if the wrapping around them leaves a lot to be desired.


You control four children: Jack, Russel, Anne, and Marie, when they get lost in the woods on their way to… something. Honestly, the story is pretty thin and functional at best, serving only as the driving force to put the kids into various puzzling situations. The characters, unfortunately, don't fare much better. They really don't evolve beyond single note tropes, and frankly, have trouble even reaching said note.

But that's okay. The game makes no claims of being a sweeping epic, so a functional plot is perfectly fine. However, it feels like the characters TRY to be developed, only to go nowhere of any real substance. Between each stage, the four talk about the puzzle ahead as well as an attempt at party banter, the latter coming off as a little forced and actually a bit mean spirited. Take Marie for instance. Sure, no one likes a spoiled brat, but it seems like the others go out of their way to insult her.


Excuse me? A dead cell phone is a legitimate concern. How else are you planning to call for help? Jack? Russel? Are you even listening to this?

While this is the most extreme example, this is an instance where an odd mix of characterization and a lack of characterization come together to create an uncertain and sometimes hostile atmosphere, and I'm left wondering if these kids really are really friends at all. This could be fixed by fleshing out the characters a little more so that players know that this is either Anne just being snarky or if Marie is legitimately being harassed.
All that being said, this issue is really not as major as the last few paragraphs make it out to be. Neither story nor characters were at the forefront of this game, so whatever interpretation you may have for these scenes, be it lighthearted or much less so, it does not hamper the game as a whole.


The presentation of Kiddo's Puzzcade comes off very strongly as, for lack of a better term, "Video Game-y." I'm not a user of 2k3 so I can only assume a decent amount of custom work went into the visuals if the list of tileset artists in the credits is any indication, but the layout of the game is very clearly meant to prioritize puzzle concepts first and a real world a distant second. In fact, the game is willing the break the laws of physics in order to provide a setup for a puzzle: In one of the stages, the four are trapped inside a pitch black room, and need to rely on Marie's cell phone for light. It's a simple enough concept, but once you realize what's in the room, eyebrows will start to raise:


So you're telling me that LAVA is not going to provide any sort of light in the room?

This point might be interpreted as nitpicking, and I would absolutely agree if it weren't for the VERY NEXT room, where a small handful of torches manage to give off just enough light for the party to see.

This major inconsistency, combined with the poorly explain supernatural elements in the beginning, drops whatever suspension of disbelief players may have and can make the game seem like it's trying too hard to set up a puzzle.

So in terms of story and presentation, I found Kiddos Puzzcade lacking quite a bit. Thankfully, seeing as neither of these things were the game's major selling points, I wouldn't claim that they should be considered flaws. More like missed opportunities and minor oddities. For future projects, I hope to see Gretgor make a more earnest attempt at characterization and consistent world-building, as it can add a lot of personality to the story and perhaps some inspiration for puzzle mechanics. Speaking of which…


Wanna know a secret about me? The quickest way to my heart as a player is to add gameplay elements based on the personalities of the characters. While it's true that the four kids in Kiddos Puzzcade aren't developed beyond a single trope, those tropes are represented well in gameplay in that each kid has a unique gimmick used to solve puzzles based on their character trait: Jack is the brash adventure boy who can move boulders, Russel is the brains of the group by making use of homemade bombs, Anne is the loud and impatient person who can jump higher than anyone else, and Marie is the spoiled rich kid whose cell phone (Seriously?!) can illuminate dark areas. Each of these traits, with varied priorities, are required to solve the game's puzzles.

The speedrunners out there will make use of a short results screen that keeps track of how long it takes you to complete a puzzle. Personally, I took it as a challenge to try to complete each puzzle as fast as I could. So, in my haste to complete each room, I often ended up making small mistakes, like moving a character in someone else's way accidentally or pushing a boulder too far, that I could correct but at the cost of time.

It's after this self-applied challenge, though, that the game's issues begin to rear themselves. For one, pressing the Z key cycles the player controlled character from Jack to Russel to Anne to Marie. There is no way to reverse that cycle. If I wanted to switch from Jack to Marie, I had to press Z three times. Why there isn’t a way to cycle through the kids in reverse is beyond me, but they did grate on the back of my brain when I knew the solution to the puzzle but had to wait a precious extra second cycling through the characters.

This linear cycle wouldn't actually be so bad if the characters I was switching to were consistently useful. Marie's cell phone was only required for about a fourth of the game's puzzles, and Anne's jumping ability was just a glorified switch pressing mechanic, something that really needed more functionality, as the same result can be replicated by just putting the switch on the floor instead. If Anne could jump over gaps, she would have been MUCH more useful as a character. As it is, I only needed to think about how to move Jack and Russel and ignore the girls unless they needed to hold down a switch.

The second, and more severe, is that the difficulty curve is pretty far out of whack. I only recall one or two of the game's eight puzzles where the abilities of all four kids were actually required to progress, and it certainly wasn't the final two. As I said before, only Jack and Russel felt like they were useful throughout the whole game. Marie and Anne were for the most part regulated to the task of standing on switches, which strikes me as a pretty large missed opportunity. As each puzzle came and went, I was expecting the next one to more heavily rely on either of the girls, but that moment never came.

Finally, and this is again more of a personal gripe, the game is quite short. I completed it in less than ten minutes. By the time the mechanics were introduced fully and I had just gotten used to how all four characters played, the credits rolled. Of course, short doesn't mean bad, and there's no way Kiddo's Puzzcade can be considered bad, but the ending just felt so abrupt and out of place considering the lack of followthrough for the mechanics that it felt like it was just a cluster of cool-looking mechanics without any real development. There comes a point where you realize that simply adding in stuff means nothing if it isn't developed properly. Personally, I would rather have had only three kids to solve puzzles with, with each kid's gimmick being more prominent (looking at you, Anne Go away) than four kids who don't get as much development.

If you even kinda sorta like puzzle games, give Puzzle Kiddos a play. It's got a lot of good things going for it, and it doesn't ask too much of a time investment. Highly recommend it.


First try, and I only had to reset once. Beat that. Please don't. Let me feel good about myself for a little while!