Expanding on the mind-bending puzzle challenges previously found only on Nintendo 3DS, this Wii U title offers a variety of challenges that can only be solved by manipulating a wall of 3D obstacles. Pushmo World finds players pushing, pulling and climbing blocks to solve a collection of more than 250 new puzzles. What separates Pushmo World from the other games in the series, besides the crisp and colorful HD graphics and original puzzles, is the addition of World Pushmo Fair, an in-game hub that gives players an easy way to share and download new puzzles. In Pushmo World, players are tasked with solving three-dimensional block-based puzzles by moving blocks to climb to the top of structures. As the game progresses, the puzzles get larger and more complex, with some massive, screen-filling creations resembling familiar objects, animals and even classic Nintendo characters. Pushmo World introduces a collection of training levels that players can use to hone their puzzle-climbing skills. The game also features a time-rewind option that lets players undo mistakes. This forgiving feature rewards players for being smart thinkers, rather than forcing them to restart a complex puzzle for making a hasty move. Being stumped won’t stop the fun: If players are stuck on a particularly tough puzzle, they can skip ahead to the next one. In addition to the numerous puzzles included in the game, Pushmo World lets players create their own puzzles using a selection of tools in Pushmo Studio and share them with friends and others around the world.
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Pushmo World is, as the other games in the Pushmo series are, a puzzle platformer about solving picture-like puzzles called "Pushmo". The story is very simple, as this time a bunch of children were playing on the Pushmo puzzles when a mischievous doggo hit all the reset switches, trapping them inside. It's our round, red hero Mallo's duty to go and save all of those poor children! It's a very paper-thin plot, but that's all it needs to be. The aesthetic is very toy-block like in how the levels are constructed, and the music is also excellent (particularly the Mario/NES remix tracks~). Mallo himself is also adorable, and I love him <3
The gameplay itself is one of "easy to learn, tough to master", as the mechanics themselves are pretty bog simple. There are panels in the back of the stage, and you pull them out from the front or the side to hop onto them. You can't a block such that you fall off of the platform you're on, and blocks can only be pulled out up to a maximum of three spaces. There are some extra tools like ladders that teleport you from one block to another as well as arrows that can make all blocks of a certain color extend or retract fully, but it's really a case of the game giving you a simple toolset, and then gradually giving you puzzles that push that toolset farther and farther. They're really cleverly crafted, and the difficulty curve is also very well handled (though the last puzzle genuinely took me like half an hour to solve XD).
Thankfully, the game is merciful enough to give you a rewind button you can hold down to turn back time up to several minutes, and it's a great way to quickly undo a mistake, or to test out if a certain solution is even possible without worrying about needing to undo everything you've accomplished up to this point. All puzzles even have a giant reset button you can press (although it'd be nearly impossible to push it on accident it's so far away from the puzzle itself), so you don't need to exit the level if you're truly stumped and just wanna retry from the start. The game doesn't even time your solve times, so there's no pressure at all to solve stuff quickly other than what you wanna put on yourself to try and achieve~.
There are also a handful of some "Mysterious Pushmo" for you to solve, which introduce concepts like ALL blocks of a certain color being affected when you operate just one, "ying-yang" blocks that extend when their opposing color is retracted (and vice versa), and even blocks that only stay extended for a limited amount of time. The game only gives you ten or so of each of these, and that's mainly because interacting with them unlocks them in the game's level editor. Once upon a time when Miiverse was still a thing, you could play tons of user-created Pushmo puzzles, but that time is no more. While this game DOES still have 250 puzzles more or less unique from the 3DS Pushmo game, that big pull of user-created content is sadly no longer something you can interact with.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. Intelligent Systems really knows how to make themselves a puzzle game, and the Pushmo series impresses as always. They're not the hardest brain benders in the world, but they're great for puzzle-enjoyers of any age with how good the difficulty curve is. The game is pretty cheap and it'll also give you many hours of enjoyment if you're set to try and solve all the puzzles, so this is a very easy recommendation if you want a charming, well-crafted puzzle game on your Wii U (and you don't even need the main screen to play it, so you can just play on the game pad with headphones if someone else needs the TV~).