Pushmo is a wonderfully intuitive and very clever take on block-pushing puzzle games. Instead of pushing things around on a 2D grid, Pushmo has you pushing and pulling sometimes oddly shaped tiles along the Z-axis, crafting protrusions for your character to jump on in order to save children trapped in the puzzles.
Similar to my experience with Snakebird, I found the middle portion of the game to be the most rewarding. The beginning is very tutorial heavy, and while I'm sure they're nice for someone who's never held a 3DS they were a little obvious to me. Conversely, later levels had my brain fried. What was once a relaxing puzzler turned into a feeling of going into a math exam not having studied.
My two main problems with Pushmo stem from the design of the puzzles themselves. Namely the later ones.
Firstly, levels are designed with a lot of distractions. The game even flat out tells you this shortly after extra mechanics are introduced: Don't fall for useless gadgets! While obfuscation is basically required for a puzzle game, I can't help but feel a little annoyed when I've been wasting time trying to make something work that doesn't even relate to the solution.
Secondly, while Pushmo has a very forgiving rewind-time feature, it often isn't enough to save you from hitting the reset button because you left one block in the wrong place 5 minutes ago. Again, doing things over is kind of a staple of games like this, but with how slow and relaxed Pushmo is, it is a bit annoying to have to start from scratch for one unfixable mistake.
Overall though, this game is great. Most of my complaints can be chalked up to the fact that I don't play many puzzle games, and may or may not be an idiot in general. What I will say is that the middle portion of this game was perfect for me. There's something special about the journey and discovery of solving what seemed like a monumental puzzle all on my own - and half of them are arranged as wonderful pixel art to boot! Even the ones that frustrated me ended with a feeling of accomplishment. Though that may be a Pavlovian reaction to that catchy ass level-clear jingle at this point...
Similar to my experience with Snakebird, I found the middle portion of the game to be the most rewarding. The beginning is very tutorial heavy, and while I'm sure they're nice for someone who's never held a 3DS they were a little obvious to me. Conversely, later levels had my brain fried. What was once a relaxing puzzler turned into a feeling of going into a math exam not having studied.
My two main problems with Pushmo stem from the design of the puzzles themselves. Namely the later ones.
Firstly, levels are designed with a lot of distractions. The game even flat out tells you this shortly after extra mechanics are introduced: Don't fall for useless gadgets! While obfuscation is basically required for a puzzle game, I can't help but feel a little annoyed when I've been wasting time trying to make something work that doesn't even relate to the solution.
Secondly, while Pushmo has a very forgiving rewind-time feature, it often isn't enough to save you from hitting the reset button because you left one block in the wrong place 5 minutes ago. Again, doing things over is kind of a staple of games like this, but with how slow and relaxed Pushmo is, it is a bit annoying to have to start from scratch for one unfixable mistake.
Overall though, this game is great. Most of my complaints can be chalked up to the fact that I don't play many puzzle games, and may or may not be an idiot in general. What I will say is that the middle portion of this game was perfect for me. There's something special about the journey and discovery of solving what seemed like a monumental puzzle all on my own - and half of them are arranged as wonderful pixel art to boot! Even the ones that frustrated me ended with a feeling of accomplishment. Though that may be a Pavlovian reaction to that catchy ass level-clear jingle at this point...