Chii's Challenge was a puzzle game created for the RETROMANIA event held in honour of RMN's 10th Birthday. Being a direct homage to top-down tile-based 1989 puzzle video game Chip's Challenge, as evidenced even in the title alone, one expects to control a protagonist through a series of increasingly difficult tile-based 2D levels before the time limit runs out.


All tiles were custom made by Liberty herself, in shades of blue and animated to be as retro as possible. The graphics and sound cohered so that at no point did I feel drawn out of the experience by something that looked or felt out of era. Everything from the sound to the visuals to the animations felt like I was playing a game of old. The music was very well-composed and had me humming along, pleased.


The puzzles were pleasing enough, having a start and a finish point and some obstacles in between. But being a person who obsesses over puzzles and their design and the way they're brought about, I felt that the path was too linear and didn't test many skills. There were the traditional ones that are usually in JRPGs, such as the pushing of the boulders to reveal something behind them, and the teleport areas. Speaking of teleport areas, it seems to me that many games wish to use these without knowing what makes them so interesting other than memory recall. Puzzles like this can be solved by trial and error without thinking too much.

However, most of the puzzles were pleasing enough because they weren't too difficult and mostly involved following a set route, which was "okay, the only key I can get to is this one so I guess I have to go this way". But for a game made within the short timeframe that the RETROMANIA event demanded (10 days), puzzle contrivances can be forgiven as long as the overall experience feels polished and complete and has no bugs. I came across no bugs during my playthrough and it was a pleasant walk in the park, even though I would have liked to have been challenged a bit more. The addition of new tiles to be used in more emergent ways like in the original Chip's Challenge would have eventually been welcomed, as kory_toombs has already done in his faithful and well-considered version of the grandfather game.


A good diversion and a nice little jam game that could be expanded further. I enjoyed the audiovisual component of this game, and even though I felt like the puzzles could have been more well-considered, the game as a whole is built with few cracks and that made for a pleasant experience to walk through. Thanks for the game, Liberty, and all of the things you've given to the site. You're truly an inspiration.