I originally got into this game because it was featured on the frontpage, looked cute, and I love me some puzzle platformers. The fact that Libby gave this a perfect score made me even more excited to play it.

So I started playing, and at first, it was really enjoyable, but the deeper I went into the game, the more frustrating, ragequit-inducing sections I found.

It's a real shame, because this game could have been great, but those sections bring the pacing to a tragic halt. They're not pervasive enough to ruin the game, mind you, but they can easily sour one's mood.

Presentation

This game looks adorable. I love the retro pixel aesthetic that it goes for, with nice sceneries, adorable characters and self-explanatory blocks and obstacles. It is always clear what everything does by their appearance alone, and that speaks volumes to how thoughtful this game's design is.

The music and sound effects are pretty good too. They perfectly fit the mood of a fun series of light hearted adventures.

So yeah, I have no complaints on the presentation front. This game looks and sounds just fine.

Gameplay

This game is a puzzle platformer for the most part, but there's some more fast-paced obstacle-dodging parts here and there as well. I, for one, like this alternation between puzzling and action.

I really like this game's core mechanic, where you acquire powerups that allow you to change the properties of certain blocks. One powerup makes blocks immaterial, another makes blocks wall-jumpable, one that I really like turns blocks into springs, and there are many others too. This fascinating core mechanic is used in several different action and puzzle sequences throughout this game's many levels, and I love how varied they get.

The action sequences involve quickly navigating past obstacles and enemies. They're usually not too hard, but still quite fun to go through, and they offer a bit of a break from the puzzling that constitutes the bulk of the gameplay.

The puzzle sections are pretty nice for the most part. You have to use your block changing abilities to solve problems in order to advance or get coins, and with the rich collection of powers to choose from, there are some really neat puzzles here. I particularly like most puzzles where we have to lead the cute blue enemies to certain buttons in order to get across, all while using springs, phantom blocks and exclamation bridges to get it there.

The level design is usually pretty fascinating. For instance, there is one awesome level where you have to pick whether you want the wall jump or the gravity switch. Playing with the wall jump makes the level more of a traditional action platformer, while going for the gravity switch makes for a more brainy puzzle experience. Mind you, this is all in the same level, as in the exact same series of obstacles, no unique level elements appear for one powerup over the other or anything. This is really good stuff.

I also really like how well tutorialized everything is in this game. The game teaches you stuff by putting you in a situation where doing the thing you need to do is the most common sense thing to do, and upon doing it, you learn how a particular mechanic works. That, combined with the aforementioned intuitive graphic design, makes the game perfectly understandable without a single line of text.

So, with all that said, it breaks my heart to say that there are some really troublesome parts. See, some puzzles in this game are a bit on the "horrendously godawful" side of things. You know, the type where you have to do things in a very precise manner with impeccable timing in order to succeed, and even the smallest deviation may result in having to go all the way back to the last checkpoint? Yeah, that kind of horrendously godawful.

For instance, consider the following section in Power Plant Problems:


What you have to do here is use the block-creation power to pull the blue electric current to the button on the right while stepping on the button on the left. As you do that, the purple gates will open, and the blue guy on top of the screen will fall. You have to open up the purple gates at just the right time to make the blue guy's falling trajectory coincide with the button, and as if that weren't enough, you have to brace the two spaces on either side of the button to keep the blue guy from falling off while you make your way to the horizontal gate to the right. Oh, you also have to jump out of the way to avoid getting bodied by the blue dude, but not too early, otherwise the purple gates will close before he starts falling.

All that is made even worse by the fact that the exclamation mark blocks vanish after a few seconds, giving you very little time to set everything up and execute. The mental challenge of figuring out what you need to do is fine, but the execution challenge afterwards is ludicrous. It's not a trial of mind or reflexes, it's a trial of my darn patience.

This kind of frustrating puzzle is extremely frequent in the later portions of the game, and they never fail to ruin my mood. I ragequit a few times because of these, which just left me with negative feelings about the whole ordeal.

I can't help but wonder how much better this game could be if those frustrating parts had more lenient timing, or were just cut off entirely. As it stands, the game is mostly a fun time, but punctuated with mood-killing, ragequit-inducing moments in certain levels that angered me a lot.

Final thoughts

This game has a lot going for it. The cute presentation, the interesting mechanics, and the sheer variety are all awesome.

The frustration I mentioned was enough to sour my mood for a while, but not enough to make my opinion negative. I do believe this game could have been much greater without this stuff, but I understand that it would be really hard to replace those parts given how they work together with the rest of their respective levels.

All in all, I do recommend this game, but be ready to pull your hair out on occasion.