This was previously on Apple Arcade, a platform that you can’t convince me actually exists. It went from there to Switch a year after its Apple Arcade release,  so finally actual people could play this.

I wasn’t excited for it after it popped up on some Nintendo indie presentation, but it seemed I was in the minority. People on twitter were really hyping it up, and everyone that played it seemed to really like it. So I figured… eh, why not!

So read on and see why not! Yes, this is my first negative review on this particular blog. I never want to be negative about games, but it happens. More than it should. But it’s important to figure out why some games fail to reach expectations.
Developer and Publisher: Capy Games
Release date: December 15th 2020
Platforms: Switch
Genre: Puzzle

So I was under the impression at first that this was a roguelite based on some descriptions, but it is not. It is a puzzle game with a pretty regular level progression.

You play as this weird warrior dude who kills things to gather crystals to make money to support his family, or something. The plot isn’t important. When you get into a dungeon room,  you take a space in a 7 by 7 grid, down in the middle. Other spaces in the grid are taken by obstacles, items and enemies.

The puzzle mechanics are interesting. Enemies exist in different colors/designs (all the blue ones look the same, all the red ones look to same, and so on). On your turn, you move a cursor starting from your character in all 8 directions, towards an enemy (or obstacle). After putting the cursor on another space, you become, let’s say, “attached” to that color. So you can keep moving the cursor, but only to that same color. You’re basically making a path through enemies of that color. Some enemies are colorless but require you to have gone through a certain number of enemies before you can hit them, but a colorless enemy resets your color so you can continue your chain towards other colors. Some obstacles can be broken through as well, usually requiring having gone through 3-5 enemies to do so. Once your path ends and you can no longer go on, you can launch your attack. Warrior dude will follow the path you made and kill everything you selected. Getting big enough combos generates crystals (which fall on a random space on the map) and breaking obstacles generates items (which fall on a random space on the map). Crystals and items can be added to your path regardless of your current color, and crystals allow you to switch colors. After your attack goes through, if you end your path next to an enemy that is mad, you will get attacked. Before creating your path you can also use weapons/shield which can have all sorts of different effects, and with monster chunks you can get certain foods which also have different useful effects.

When your attack ends, new enemies come down from the top of the screen to replace every empty square. If there’s a not-dead enemy on top of an empty square it goes down, so by killing enemies you move the entire board. Some elements don’t move. Items, crystals, obstacles, big enemies and you will stay in whatever square you were. This is where I’d say the problems of this game start, unfortunately. It’s weird because I’ve played other games with similar mechanics and it didn’t bother me that much, because you could still start from anywhere on the screen to do combos… in this game, you start from the warrior’s space. That’s a big problem because it becomes nearly impossible to plan ahead in some cases. Like, maybe you’ll be stuck somewhere where there’s no possible paths, or the colors spread out too much that you’re stuck several turns unable to do anything… but some levels have it WAY worse. Some levels have moving platforms which become REALLY shit to deal with because you may need specific colors not only on the platform but on the other side to pass across a hole. Some levels have enemies/obstacles that kill a shitload of enemies on the screen too… fuck planning when half the enemies in the level, or more, die every other turn, you can only hope to be lucky. That’s not good game design. There’s a level where I had to kill a blue king. Problem? Well after so many turns that every enemy was enraged, only 3 blue enemies had spawned, total, in that whole map. No crystals I was generating were landing even close to the king. It just kept happening. Bad design.

The goal of every level tends to be to kill a certain number of enemies, which opens the door. Then you can create a path to the door and finish the level. Each level (other than bosses) have 2 extra goals. Generally around the time you open the door (sometimes before, sometimes a few turns after) a chest will fall somewhere random on the grid, and a key will fall somewhere else random on the field which an enemy will carry. Getting the key then the chest is one of the objectives. The last one is much like the chest one, but instead it’s a king monster that appears. You gotta kill him. He’s gonna fall on a random spot on the map at some point and be a random color. This isn’t quite as optional because you DO need what they drop when you kill them to progress. Eventually you have more than enough to not have to kill all of them, but still… Might as well do it, right?

So doing all this stuff; killing enemies, grabbing items, grabbing crystals, killing kings, opening chests… they give you resources you can bring back to the inn to do stuff. There’s 4 stores there. The tavern allows you to pay crystals so you can heal some hearts (you don’t heal during or in-between levels otherwise). There’s one that makes and sells weapons and shields and stuff. Those are used in levels for various effects. You can hit enemies before moving in different ways, you can protect yourself from damage, you can enrage or un-enrage enemies and various other things. Some items recover uses between levels, others need to be replenished after a few uses at the store. The third shop makes and sells costumes. Some are armor, some make you stronger against different kind of targets… and the only one that’s worth using, the Santa suit, has a random chance of generating a random resource that will fall on a random enemy. The last one takes scraps from enemies you kill and you can trade that in for food items, which are single-use and tremendously expensive. There’s a few useful ones.

And that’s about it for this game. Each set of levels ends with some boss battle, some of which are decent. Some sets of levels also have side-caves with their own sets of levels, for some extra rewards, sometimes for blueprints for new equipment. Beating a boss leads you to a rock that you can move out of the way by paying crowns you get from kings. There’s apparently over 200 levels in the game, so it’s pretty long. New gimmicks get added from time to time, with new enemy types and shitty moving platforms.

I will say the graphics are basically reject Adventure Time character designs (the yellow enemies I’m sure were directly lifted from Adventure Time, with the sideways mouth and all… I might be wrong)… It’s nice and colorful, I have no issue with the visuals at all. I just wish I could enjoy the gameplay.

Overall

This game is not great. Unfortunately. It’s a shame because some levels are genuinely fun, but the randomness and the lack of ability to deal with it overall raises the frustration level a bit too high. I’d love to be able to at least try to plan ahead in some levels, and it’s just not possible. A lot of the time, if you lose, it’s because the game is just not giving you the colors you need, or doesn’t randomly drop a crystal in the spot you need, and so on. It needs to feel like it’s at least a bit your fault when you lose in a game, but this one it’s rarely your fault unless you stay in a level too long. I’ve died maybe twice by my own fault, largely because I would move to a spot without paying attention to if there were mad enemies there. I think the limitation of HAVING to start from the warrior every turn makes things worse than if you could start from anywhere. You’d think using weapons would help, but it rarely does.

I really want to like this game. The core gameplay has interesting ideas, it’s basically a matching game with a life bar, the presentation is fine… but man some of these levels made my opinion go from “this is okay” to “fuck this game”. You can’t have a game designed entirely around “hope the game will let you win randomly” and have me praise it. That just won’t happen.

It sucks to say because this is so close to being good, but I can’t recommend this game. I might be in the minority here based on what I’ve seen on twitter, but the game design is missing something to make it less random, less “you will win if the game wants you to”.