1985
Y'know, I'm not quite sure how I should rate and review this game. If I compare this to the many other versions of Tetris out there, it is quite obvious that this is one of the worst ones. From the horrible, ear-piercing beeps after every input you make on the keyboard, to the oh so slow updating of the pieces, to the pitiful amount of inputs the computer recognizes per second, it is not good by todays standards. I mean, to put in perspective, I played one game of Tetris for 37 minutes straight, and I only got to 150 lines. It's really slow.
However. This is in no way a fault of Alexey Pajitnov, but rather the computer that he programmed this on, that being the Electronika 60. Because of this, I won't dock any stars by those admitted negatives I have listed, because quite frankly, they were simply outside of his control. We have to remember the constraints in which he was set in while programming Tetris, and make an effort not to negatively rate this first version due to these constraints.
That being said, for the first version of Tetris, it's pretty much already all here. You have the same matrix dimensions that we still have today, the same tetriminoes, the speed increasing after 10 lines, the next box, all of it. The only things really missing are the fact the next box only shows one piece, there's only one rotation button, and technically the 7-bag next piece system. I won't count that last one however, because quite frankly, while 7-bag is nice, it's definitely not as sorely needed as the other two.
Everything fundamentally works almost identically to the uber-popular NES and GameBoy versions of Tetris (besides the GameBoy versions broken RNG of course) besides the scoring system and less speed levels, and that really is a testament to just how simple but elegant this game is. The only possible complaint I could have besides things that are due to the computer itself, not the program, is that there weren't enough speed levels, and I felt like it capped at too slow of a speed, and that I could really play infinitely long if I wished to.
That gradual increase of speed levels up to the point it's near impossible to play really is basically a staple of Tetris in my opinion, and it's pretty much at it's best in the NES version. Once you reach level 29, the game has what's been dubbed a "kill-screen", in which the blocks move so fast, that the usual method of play is literally impossible once you get to this point. Now, in the over 30 years since the game has released, there have been methods discovered by the NES Tetris community to actually tap fast enough to competently play in the kill-screen, but that's something to be further discussed a different time. The point is, that cap where the game really forces you to stop, is a truly great feature of NES Tetris, and most other Tetris games.
Granted, however, the main reason this kill-screen is actually a driving factor to just keep playing and getting better, and by extension the reason one is driven to actually try and complete Tetrises instead of many, many singles and doubles, is the scoring system, which is seemingly absent in this version of the game.
I previously had a full two paragraphs talking about the importance of the scoring system, and how it is fundamentally required in order to give Tetris any sort of replayability. I then realized that once you top out, the Russian that's added to the screen afterward is actually asking me to put my name, and then it will show you your full score. I did not know this until after I had already closed my window of 150 lines, so I guess we'll never know what score I got.
I also said in the now-deleted two paragraphs how because the speed feels so slow as a cap, and how the score is absent, I cannot put this as a perfect rating. I took a half-star off for both of those features. Now that I know of the score's non-absence, I feel okay with adding a half-star, bringing this up to 4.5.
I would also like to mention how when speaking of how slow this game is, I would learn that at least part of it was simply due to the simulator I was using, and not totally to the fault of the computer itself, when playing on original hardware. I do still believe though, that the speed is a bit slow on original hardware, and I do think I'll stand by those statements, just not to the same exaggerated tone I may or may not have portrayed earlier in this review.
I don't think it's perfect, but I should say as a disclaimer that it's not like it was meant to be. After all, this version was never put out to the public, and was merely created purely for Alexey's own enjoyment. I don't think he could've known the influence that Tetris would have on the video game market when he was first programming it, and I definitely don't think he was aiming to make the perfect video game while making it. That being said, the fact this game is still so incredibly popular, addicting, and true-to-form so many years later, cannot be understated.
However. This is in no way a fault of Alexey Pajitnov, but rather the computer that he programmed this on, that being the Electronika 60. Because of this, I won't dock any stars by those admitted negatives I have listed, because quite frankly, they were simply outside of his control. We have to remember the constraints in which he was set in while programming Tetris, and make an effort not to negatively rate this first version due to these constraints.
That being said, for the first version of Tetris, it's pretty much already all here. You have the same matrix dimensions that we still have today, the same tetriminoes, the speed increasing after 10 lines, the next box, all of it. The only things really missing are the fact the next box only shows one piece, there's only one rotation button, and technically the 7-bag next piece system. I won't count that last one however, because quite frankly, while 7-bag is nice, it's definitely not as sorely needed as the other two.
Everything fundamentally works almost identically to the uber-popular NES and GameBoy versions of Tetris (besides the GameBoy versions broken RNG of course) besides the scoring system and less speed levels, and that really is a testament to just how simple but elegant this game is. The only possible complaint I could have besides things that are due to the computer itself, not the program, is that there weren't enough speed levels, and I felt like it capped at too slow of a speed, and that I could really play infinitely long if I wished to.
That gradual increase of speed levels up to the point it's near impossible to play really is basically a staple of Tetris in my opinion, and it's pretty much at it's best in the NES version. Once you reach level 29, the game has what's been dubbed a "kill-screen", in which the blocks move so fast, that the usual method of play is literally impossible once you get to this point. Now, in the over 30 years since the game has released, there have been methods discovered by the NES Tetris community to actually tap fast enough to competently play in the kill-screen, but that's something to be further discussed a different time. The point is, that cap where the game really forces you to stop, is a truly great feature of NES Tetris, and most other Tetris games.
Granted, however, the main reason this kill-screen is actually a driving factor to just keep playing and getting better, and by extension the reason one is driven to actually try and complete Tetrises instead of many, many singles and doubles, is the scoring system, which is seemingly absent in this version of the game.
I previously had a full two paragraphs talking about the importance of the scoring system, and how it is fundamentally required in order to give Tetris any sort of replayability. I then realized that once you top out, the Russian that's added to the screen afterward is actually asking me to put my name, and then it will show you your full score. I did not know this until after I had already closed my window of 150 lines, so I guess we'll never know what score I got.
I also said in the now-deleted two paragraphs how because the speed feels so slow as a cap, and how the score is absent, I cannot put this as a perfect rating. I took a half-star off for both of those features. Now that I know of the score's non-absence, I feel okay with adding a half-star, bringing this up to 4.5.
I would also like to mention how when speaking of how slow this game is, I would learn that at least part of it was simply due to the simulator I was using, and not totally to the fault of the computer itself, when playing on original hardware. I do still believe though, that the speed is a bit slow on original hardware, and I do think I'll stand by those statements, just not to the same exaggerated tone I may or may not have portrayed earlier in this review.
I don't think it's perfect, but I should say as a disclaimer that it's not like it was meant to be. After all, this version was never put out to the public, and was merely created purely for Alexey's own enjoyment. I don't think he could've known the influence that Tetris would have on the video game market when he was first programming it, and I definitely don't think he was aiming to make the perfect video game while making it. That being said, the fact this game is still so incredibly popular, addicting, and true-to-form so many years later, cannot be understated.
2018
I'll definitely have to come back sometime soon to write up an in-depth review, but as of now, I just beat the story, and I can confidently say this is the best game I have ever played. The story is cute, weaves beautifully into the gameplay, is incredibly memorable as well as being easy to understand. The gameplay itself is utterly perfect. This game taught me my hand eye coordination when it comes to dashes is TERRIBLE lmao. The music, OH THE MUSIC. CHEF'S KISS BEAUTIFUL. I LOVE IT SO SO MUCH. Whenever I would put this game on, I had to turn off whatever video I was watching or whatever I was listening to on Spotify, because the sound design has just such a way of getting you immersed, it is absolutely magical. It's honestly so easy to fall into this game and not come out for a long while, and the only reason I didn't beat this in one or two days was because I always was playing right before going to sleep. Some people don't like the artstyle but personally I think it's extremely artistically pleasing. The only problem I had was sometimes I didn't notice some foreground platforms, or had some trouble distinguishing background and foreground elements, but then again I tend to tunnel vision SUPER hard when I play games, so frankly I would just chalk it up to that. I'm really thinking and the only complaint I could possibly give is that Theo is pretty cringe most of the time, but I was perfectly able to cope with it, it's not like it took me out of the moment while playing. I'm just thinking back to those intense sequences (which i will not specify for the sake of spoilers) where I was zooming through sections first try, not even knowing how I was doing what I was doing, and feeling like an absolute god. Madeline's movement is SSS+ Platinum Rank exceptional feeling and I absolutely love it, which is amazing and I'm so happy they were able to nail that. Something as simple as how your character controls can easily change the feeling of a game like this from something engaging and rewarding, to frustrating and unfair feeling, and I am extremely happy to report that this lands in the former's territory. Overall, this is gaming excellence, and I wouldn't change a single thing about Celeste. It's beautiful and heartwarming every single step of the way.
2023
man what the fuck is this
2024
I'm very hesitant about this game. Whilst I feel like it invokes that survival game charm in a particularly good way that most others seem to fail at, at the same time it feels rather soulless in it's presentation. The company itself is pretty weird, with evidence that it may have used AI to create it's Pals, the CEO saying he doesn't care for making original games, but rather ones that follow trends, and their history of discontinuing Early Access games fairly early on, it certainly gives me a lot of reasons not to support them. That being said, as mentioned before, the core game here is actually quite fun, and there is no concrete proof that these Pals were AI generated, merely (pretty credible) suspicions.
1991
Love love love this game, and I feel like it's shorter gametime helps prevent boredom. While initially it'll seem shit since you can't turn your brain off and go fast, the point was that truly skilled players would be rewarded with speed while beginners would have to learn that level layout. Gop tier music as always, spike bug sucks though and OH MY GOD DO NOT PLAY TJIS ON PS3. THE INPUT DELAY IS TERRIBLEEEEEE IT WAS SO HORRIBLE TO 100% THOSE TROPHIES
1989
Simply the perfect game. Played this competitively for a bit, definitely a highlight of my gaming experiences.
1998
LEGO Chess, unsurprisingly, is just Chess with a bit of Lego flavoring. In my opinion though, it’s pretty well done, and I quite enjoyed my time. This game was unbelievably hard to get running on a modern PC, taking a combined 12 HOURS. I spent 12 hours to play LEGO Chess. Now I want to preface this by saying, I don’t know SHIT about how to play chess. Please forgive me. I am sorry. Anyways, let’s get to the menus before the actual game, because I think they’re notable enough to warrant speaking on.
Upon entering the game and choosing or creating our profile, we get met with the King. He was actually included as a minifigure in some copies of the game. The main menu itself is more of an interactive room, which I quite like. Different parts of this room lead to different menus, such as the chessboard itself being a quick match, or the book which leads to a series of tutorials. At the bottom left of the room there are these craft supplies which lead to a scrapbook, and this is shows the game's 100% condition.
It’s pretty easy, you just fill a grid in which each square is a different cutscene to unlock, with a different one being shown for one type of piece taking out another, such as pawn on pawn or pawn on bishop. If you turn the page, you can also see that there are two different themes, one being Western and the other being Pirates. The only other thing you have to do to 100% LEGO Chess is the “story” mode.
It’s really not a story mode, it’s just 3 matches against increasingly difficult CPUs, before going to the next theme. After finding this strange, I decided to do a bit of research and found that this game had a pretty rushed development, and one of these side effects was the lack of the story part of story mode. I found someone on YouTube who did some digging around the files of their disc, and apparently there were supposed to be cutscenes before and after matches in the story mode, which would be different depending on if you won or lost the match. They had this for each of the 3 levels for both themes, meaning 6 full cutscenes that were left unused.
Speaking of cutscenes, there are a combined 120 unique cutscenes, 60 for each theme. Although, half of these are literally just texture swaps between models depending on what team captures who, so we can safely half it to 60 total.
Onto the actual gameplay itself, it’s pretty cozy to be honest. I don't know, just something about the charm of these figures, the sound effects, and the style of the cutscenes just works, which I really wasn’t expecting in such an early Lego title. There also is indeed background music, which is actually pretty chill and I quite liked it. Now, when I started playing this game, I was getting unbelievably frustrated, and trust me, you’ll understand why.
Multiple times throughout the game, seemingly completely randomly, I would just, poof. Crash. No clue how, no clue why, nothing. After a few times this happened mid-game, it would get to the point I couldn’t even open up a story game without crashing before even getting into it. A bit of research later though, and apparently Lego Chess looks for the A drive on your computer when you’re playing, which I didn’t have as an available drive letter. I assigned a hard drive to it, but it doesn’t seem to actually write anything to it, which greatly confuses me as to why it’s needed in the first place. You would think the crashes are fixed now, and to be fair, I could get into the game now, but that wasn’t the end of it. The crashes were less frequent, but would still happen consistently in the middle of games. After quite a bit of troubleshooting, I finally found a method to fix these crashes, at least in my experience. The PCGamingWiki recommended installing and using Direct3D drivers, which has a higher color depth, higher screen resolution, and overall would make it look better than the default driver. However, once I changed to the default software driver, I stopped getting crashes.
I’m not gonna lie, this “story” mode got really annoying. In the quick match settings, you can set the CPU difficulty from 1 to 99, and in story mode the 3 CPUs are at 25, 50, and 75 difficulty respectively. And to be frank, the last CPU is quite the bitch. There were sometimes when I would just restart immediately from an early capture because I’m an idiot and am not that good at thinking a move or two ahead, but most of the time my games would end because of this stupid ass thing called a stalemate. This happened mostly when I captured all of the CPUs pieces except for the King, so it would end up being a bit of a goose chase with the King himself. After a few moves though, boom, stalemate. No legal moves can be made according to the game. But as a chess novice, I don’t know what the fuck that means?? From MY Point of View, there’s a LOT of legal moves I could make, like hmm MOVING THE PAWN FORWARD A SPACE? THAT'S LEGAL ISN’T IT??? So yeah, very frustrating. That’s not all though. This didn’t happen once, twice, or three times, but more times then I could even bother to count. Like I said, I’m a chess novice, I don’t know how this works, so this was FRUSTRATING. HOURS of time wasted because of this stupid mechanic, which I later decided to research, and listen to how stupid this is. “Stalemate is a kind of draw that happens when one side has NO legal moves to make. If the king is NOT in check, but no piece can be moved without putting the king in check, then the game will end with a stalemate draw!” LIKE WHAT??? WHY NOT JUST GIVE ME THE CHECKMATE VICTORY AT THAT POINT???? Absolute bullshit in my opinion.
Small additional thing, there was this one move where I would see the rook and the king switch spots, and I had no clue what the hell this was. Apparently it’s called castling, and nobody really knows why it was added to chess. Why it isn’t excluded from play considering how strange of a move it is, I have no clue, and I couldn’t even figure out how to do it in-game, so yeah, I’m salty. So salty in fact, that I actually got stuck on this last CPU. I don't think it was because I'm really that bad at chess, but sometimes it just gets to the point where you get so annoyed you start playing really braindead just hoping you'll win a game, but that just was not happening. It was getting to the point I was considering giving up on the story mode considering the only 100% condition was getting all the cutscenes which I could do in quick play, but it just didn't feel right in my eyes. So after some contemplation I decided to hit the books and go to the tutorial mode. Yeah, it was to the point I figured I should actually take my time and improve at chess rather than brute forcing my say through it.
So, at first I thought going to the tutorials would be a good idea, but it turns out you gotta start at the very very beginning, meaning i had to spend close to AN HOUR learning the very very basics. I'm not gonna lie, it didn't take too long for the braindead playing to set in, mostly because this king just does. not. stop. TALKING. In it's defense though, it is definitely aimed at a very young audience, so it does make sense that I'd be incredibly bored by it. I just wish these tutorials weren't required for the 100%.
So, for some context, in each of these lessons, learning the pawns for example, you will get a record depending on how well you do. If you get zero mistakes, you get a platinum record (like vinyl record). I originally thought this was just a dinky little dopamine device to make kids feel good about themselves, but nope, not only are you told what record you get, but that bitch is framed on the wall. It took quite a few days of procrastinating, and I finally got through the first of 3 books required, giving me a gold crown. What I did not know at this time was that platinum crowns existed for zero mistakes, but more on that in a second. Surprisingly, the second book actually had some useful information. I didn't know what the hell an en passant was, but I do now, and I can't say the same about any of the previous lessons, so good on you LEGO Chess. One thing I immediately noticed was this second book only has 4 lessons, compared to the first book's 16. Thank christ. After completing the second book, I managed to get a platinum crown. Now as previously mentioned, I did not know this platinum crown existed at the time, and this was very very frustrating, as that meant I had to go back to the first book to upgrade my gold crown to a platinum. Luckily I found a video online of someone getting the platinum crown on youtube, so I just copied what he did, as that checks and checkmates lesson is super annoying.
At least that's what I thought I'd do, until I found out that in the practice boards they do where they're like "get however many checks or checkmates here", those boards are randomized, so I was on my own for some of them. Thankfully I got through it, but that also meant book 3 would probably be similar. I also saw that there was one comment on the video saying how in the Hebrew version of the game, the King was even more animated than in the English version, which I did’t even wanna imagine, but had to look up.
Afterwards, the third book also only had 4 lessons, which was a relief to say the least after all I went through, and I breezed through it after taking a day break. So, while the tutorials weren’t as tedious as I thought they’d be thanks to the length of the last two books, I still had to complete the story mode and all of the pirate theme cutscenes, which seemed like they’d be tedious considering how I got stuck last time, but I actually found a checkmate trick that the AI falls for nearly every single time, in only like 3 moves. After beating the story mode, I got the rest of the cutscenes by playing quick matches and setting the difficulty to 0, making this a pretty easy ending overall.
One thing I forgot to mention was in the quick match, there is another theme technically, simply resembling traditional chess pieces. You can also make it so one theme goes against another, but sadly there are no cutscenes in this mode. In their defense, they already made over 50, cut them some slack.
When playing the game itself, there is an option to change from 3D mode to a more traditional 2D mode, but I never chose 2D, and I don’t think many people did either. They’re all just traditional pieces in the 2D mode, and obviously that means you don’t get the charm of the unique assets in the 3D board. Something I found neat for the time was there was actually an option to play a network game with another player in the main menu. I never ended up trying this because imagine how complicated that would be to setup in Windows 11 in 2023.
So yeah, that’s Lego Chess. There isn’t too much to talk about, but I quite enjoyed my time.
Upon entering the game and choosing or creating our profile, we get met with the King. He was actually included as a minifigure in some copies of the game. The main menu itself is more of an interactive room, which I quite like. Different parts of this room lead to different menus, such as the chessboard itself being a quick match, or the book which leads to a series of tutorials. At the bottom left of the room there are these craft supplies which lead to a scrapbook, and this is shows the game's 100% condition.
It’s pretty easy, you just fill a grid in which each square is a different cutscene to unlock, with a different one being shown for one type of piece taking out another, such as pawn on pawn or pawn on bishop. If you turn the page, you can also see that there are two different themes, one being Western and the other being Pirates. The only other thing you have to do to 100% LEGO Chess is the “story” mode.
It’s really not a story mode, it’s just 3 matches against increasingly difficult CPUs, before going to the next theme. After finding this strange, I decided to do a bit of research and found that this game had a pretty rushed development, and one of these side effects was the lack of the story part of story mode. I found someone on YouTube who did some digging around the files of their disc, and apparently there were supposed to be cutscenes before and after matches in the story mode, which would be different depending on if you won or lost the match. They had this for each of the 3 levels for both themes, meaning 6 full cutscenes that were left unused.
Speaking of cutscenes, there are a combined 120 unique cutscenes, 60 for each theme. Although, half of these are literally just texture swaps between models depending on what team captures who, so we can safely half it to 60 total.
Onto the actual gameplay itself, it’s pretty cozy to be honest. I don't know, just something about the charm of these figures, the sound effects, and the style of the cutscenes just works, which I really wasn’t expecting in such an early Lego title. There also is indeed background music, which is actually pretty chill and I quite liked it. Now, when I started playing this game, I was getting unbelievably frustrated, and trust me, you’ll understand why.
Multiple times throughout the game, seemingly completely randomly, I would just, poof. Crash. No clue how, no clue why, nothing. After a few times this happened mid-game, it would get to the point I couldn’t even open up a story game without crashing before even getting into it. A bit of research later though, and apparently Lego Chess looks for the A drive on your computer when you’re playing, which I didn’t have as an available drive letter. I assigned a hard drive to it, but it doesn’t seem to actually write anything to it, which greatly confuses me as to why it’s needed in the first place. You would think the crashes are fixed now, and to be fair, I could get into the game now, but that wasn’t the end of it. The crashes were less frequent, but would still happen consistently in the middle of games. After quite a bit of troubleshooting, I finally found a method to fix these crashes, at least in my experience. The PCGamingWiki recommended installing and using Direct3D drivers, which has a higher color depth, higher screen resolution, and overall would make it look better than the default driver. However, once I changed to the default software driver, I stopped getting crashes.
I’m not gonna lie, this “story” mode got really annoying. In the quick match settings, you can set the CPU difficulty from 1 to 99, and in story mode the 3 CPUs are at 25, 50, and 75 difficulty respectively. And to be frank, the last CPU is quite the bitch. There were sometimes when I would just restart immediately from an early capture because I’m an idiot and am not that good at thinking a move or two ahead, but most of the time my games would end because of this stupid ass thing called a stalemate. This happened mostly when I captured all of the CPUs pieces except for the King, so it would end up being a bit of a goose chase with the King himself. After a few moves though, boom, stalemate. No legal moves can be made according to the game. But as a chess novice, I don’t know what the fuck that means?? From MY Point of View, there’s a LOT of legal moves I could make, like hmm MOVING THE PAWN FORWARD A SPACE? THAT'S LEGAL ISN’T IT??? So yeah, very frustrating. That’s not all though. This didn’t happen once, twice, or three times, but more times then I could even bother to count. Like I said, I’m a chess novice, I don’t know how this works, so this was FRUSTRATING. HOURS of time wasted because of this stupid mechanic, which I later decided to research, and listen to how stupid this is. “Stalemate is a kind of draw that happens when one side has NO legal moves to make. If the king is NOT in check, but no piece can be moved without putting the king in check, then the game will end with a stalemate draw!” LIKE WHAT??? WHY NOT JUST GIVE ME THE CHECKMATE VICTORY AT THAT POINT???? Absolute bullshit in my opinion.
Small additional thing, there was this one move where I would see the rook and the king switch spots, and I had no clue what the hell this was. Apparently it’s called castling, and nobody really knows why it was added to chess. Why it isn’t excluded from play considering how strange of a move it is, I have no clue, and I couldn’t even figure out how to do it in-game, so yeah, I’m salty. So salty in fact, that I actually got stuck on this last CPU. I don't think it was because I'm really that bad at chess, but sometimes it just gets to the point where you get so annoyed you start playing really braindead just hoping you'll win a game, but that just was not happening. It was getting to the point I was considering giving up on the story mode considering the only 100% condition was getting all the cutscenes which I could do in quick play, but it just didn't feel right in my eyes. So after some contemplation I decided to hit the books and go to the tutorial mode. Yeah, it was to the point I figured I should actually take my time and improve at chess rather than brute forcing my say through it.
So, at first I thought going to the tutorials would be a good idea, but it turns out you gotta start at the very very beginning, meaning i had to spend close to AN HOUR learning the very very basics. I'm not gonna lie, it didn't take too long for the braindead playing to set in, mostly because this king just does. not. stop. TALKING. In it's defense though, it is definitely aimed at a very young audience, so it does make sense that I'd be incredibly bored by it. I just wish these tutorials weren't required for the 100%.
So, for some context, in each of these lessons, learning the pawns for example, you will get a record depending on how well you do. If you get zero mistakes, you get a platinum record (like vinyl record). I originally thought this was just a dinky little dopamine device to make kids feel good about themselves, but nope, not only are you told what record you get, but that bitch is framed on the wall. It took quite a few days of procrastinating, and I finally got through the first of 3 books required, giving me a gold crown. What I did not know at this time was that platinum crowns existed for zero mistakes, but more on that in a second. Surprisingly, the second book actually had some useful information. I didn't know what the hell an en passant was, but I do now, and I can't say the same about any of the previous lessons, so good on you LEGO Chess. One thing I immediately noticed was this second book only has 4 lessons, compared to the first book's 16. Thank christ. After completing the second book, I managed to get a platinum crown. Now as previously mentioned, I did not know this platinum crown existed at the time, and this was very very frustrating, as that meant I had to go back to the first book to upgrade my gold crown to a platinum. Luckily I found a video online of someone getting the platinum crown on youtube, so I just copied what he did, as that checks and checkmates lesson is super annoying.
At least that's what I thought I'd do, until I found out that in the practice boards they do where they're like "get however many checks or checkmates here", those boards are randomized, so I was on my own for some of them. Thankfully I got through it, but that also meant book 3 would probably be similar. I also saw that there was one comment on the video saying how in the Hebrew version of the game, the King was even more animated than in the English version, which I did’t even wanna imagine, but had to look up.
Afterwards, the third book also only had 4 lessons, which was a relief to say the least after all I went through, and I breezed through it after taking a day break. So, while the tutorials weren’t as tedious as I thought they’d be thanks to the length of the last two books, I still had to complete the story mode and all of the pirate theme cutscenes, which seemed like they’d be tedious considering how I got stuck last time, but I actually found a checkmate trick that the AI falls for nearly every single time, in only like 3 moves. After beating the story mode, I got the rest of the cutscenes by playing quick matches and setting the difficulty to 0, making this a pretty easy ending overall.
One thing I forgot to mention was in the quick match, there is another theme technically, simply resembling traditional chess pieces. You can also make it so one theme goes against another, but sadly there are no cutscenes in this mode. In their defense, they already made over 50, cut them some slack.
When playing the game itself, there is an option to change from 3D mode to a more traditional 2D mode, but I never chose 2D, and I don’t think many people did either. They’re all just traditional pieces in the 2D mode, and obviously that means you don’t get the charm of the unique assets in the 3D board. Something I found neat for the time was there was actually an option to play a network game with another player in the main menu. I never ended up trying this because imagine how complicated that would be to setup in Windows 11 in 2023.
So yeah, that’s Lego Chess. There isn’t too much to talk about, but I quite enjoyed my time.
2012
Wait, where's the Family Guy and subtitles and satisfying video?
Going into this, I was hoping for something similar to the old SpongeBob Diner Dash experienced. I have very vague memories of playing it as a kid, and figured this might be similar. Going in however, jesus this game is bad.
First the animations, everybody here looks so.. bizarre. I have no real way to describe it besides it just looks off, like it's close but not quite the actual SpongeBob artstyle.
Next though is the dialogue, and barely any of this feels like something the characters would say. It all feels ridiculously scriptwritten and completely unnatural, and made me cringe to read.
The first and only story mode I went through was the one with pancakes(???) where they set up a shack next to SpongeBob's house to sell pancakes, because customers don't want Krabby Pattys for breakfast. I found if very confusing how we start off with pancakes of all things, when we couldn't have at least had a tutorial with the iconic Krabby Pattys? I mean, have pancakes even ever appeared in the show?
Anyways, coming to the actual gameplay, this feels ridiculously slow and easy. Throughout my short time playing, which was roughly 30 levels, this never increased majorly in difficulty either. It definitely feels like it was made for a young audience, which is to be expected, but by god these microtransactions are crazy.
Okay, so first, let's talk about currencies. There are 4 currencies. Coins are the most common, and easiest to get through levels, used for the upgrades and all that. Happy points are used for the League system they have ingame to get people to play for longer in order to get pitiful rewards. I chose not to connect via Facebook so this could be why, but nobody in the leagues were even real people to begin with. Side note, if this is aimed at young children, why have an option to even link with Facebook? Anywho, currency 3 is called Krabby dollars. These are used to purchase cosmetics ingame to upgrade the character you choose to serve and cook with, and are only earned in two ways. One, you complete the story section, which remember, is 30 levels! You get a pitiful number of these, not enough to buy literally ANYTHING for anyone, which just rubs in the fact the ONLY OTHER WAY to get these is by paying for them. Finally, we have Gems, the premiere premium currency. Now I will give them credit, it isn't stupidly hard to get Gems organically through gameplay, but it is super tedious and incredibly annoying. The easiest way you'll find is by completing "achievements", which are done by upgrading your place, in this case being the pancake shop. Now there are 3 sections to this, that being kitchen upgrades, interior upgrades, and decor. Kitchen upgrades and interior upgrades, funnily enough, use gems to even upgrade in the first place, making this method pretty redundant. Your reward for upgrading these is obviously better performance in the kitchen, as well as Fame Points, a complrtely useless metric only added to give you a slight sense of gratification once you hit it's goal, get your 2 gems as a reward, and restart it with a higher goal. The other method of getting gems is literally watching ads. For ONE GEM A PIECE. I am not joking, for a full 30 second Mistplay ad, in which I had to click FOUR SEPERATE X ICONS, I get one gem. And the best part is, I can't rapid fire these ads. No, for some godforsaken reason, they have a 40 second cooldown between them?? And that's not all, if you watch enough of them, it actually DISABLES the ads, practically FORCING you to buy more. Absolutely ridiculous. Now, to make all of this easier on you, not only can you buy currency, but (and I will give them credit for this,) it seems any purchase you make removes the intrusive ads from gameplay. And trust me, they are intrusive.
After every single level, without fail, there will be a 5 to 15 second ad. Every time. Not a single time without one. It's insane. But even better then all these microtransactions and ads clogging the gameplay loop, there's also a subscription model, oh boy! Yes yes, for TEN DOLLARS A WEEK, YOU CAN GET SOME MINOR BENEFITS. A WEEK??? Absolutely mind-boggling. What I find funny was when I actually started playing, I could increase my rewards after a level by 30% if I watched an ad, which I thought wasn't too bad of an implementation, but when I got on again later that night, poof! Gone! No ad option! ONLY the SUBSCRIPTION option!
Oh don't worry, that's not all. If you want to get Gems, but can't get your hands on mommy's credit card, don't worry, because you can get them for free through other means than watching ads. That's right, they implemented a "feature" where you can fill out extremely sketchy sweepstakes with a bunch of personal information, as well as play other mobile games you don't like for extremely long periods of time, all for a handful of gems! Isn't this great kids, I love wasting my time and giving my data to strangers on the internet!
And as if ALL of this predatory behavior wasn't enough, they have a daily reward system. Each day you play, you get this like piggy bank coin thing? After I think 7 days of consecutive play, you can either choose to get the pitiful free reward, that being 200 coins and 2 gems (to put in perspective, I've gotten as much as 1850 coins in a level before), or, and here's the best part, you can pay $3.99 FOR 5X MORE REWARDS. ABSOLUTELY INSANE. THE AMOUNT OF MONEY HUNGRY PRACTICES THEY STUFF DOWN YOUR THROAT IS MIND BLOWING. I HAVE NO WORDS.
Tl;dr, don't play, extremely predatory, reptitive, and boring. Easy 1/5. I only won't put .5/5 because while it is terrible, the game at least functions in the actual gameplay department, which I will give them the half star props for.
First the animations, everybody here looks so.. bizarre. I have no real way to describe it besides it just looks off, like it's close but not quite the actual SpongeBob artstyle.
Next though is the dialogue, and barely any of this feels like something the characters would say. It all feels ridiculously scriptwritten and completely unnatural, and made me cringe to read.
The first and only story mode I went through was the one with pancakes(???) where they set up a shack next to SpongeBob's house to sell pancakes, because customers don't want Krabby Pattys for breakfast. I found if very confusing how we start off with pancakes of all things, when we couldn't have at least had a tutorial with the iconic Krabby Pattys? I mean, have pancakes even ever appeared in the show?
Anyways, coming to the actual gameplay, this feels ridiculously slow and easy. Throughout my short time playing, which was roughly 30 levels, this never increased majorly in difficulty either. It definitely feels like it was made for a young audience, which is to be expected, but by god these microtransactions are crazy.
Okay, so first, let's talk about currencies. There are 4 currencies. Coins are the most common, and easiest to get through levels, used for the upgrades and all that. Happy points are used for the League system they have ingame to get people to play for longer in order to get pitiful rewards. I chose not to connect via Facebook so this could be why, but nobody in the leagues were even real people to begin with. Side note, if this is aimed at young children, why have an option to even link with Facebook? Anywho, currency 3 is called Krabby dollars. These are used to purchase cosmetics ingame to upgrade the character you choose to serve and cook with, and are only earned in two ways. One, you complete the story section, which remember, is 30 levels! You get a pitiful number of these, not enough to buy literally ANYTHING for anyone, which just rubs in the fact the ONLY OTHER WAY to get these is by paying for them. Finally, we have Gems, the premiere premium currency. Now I will give them credit, it isn't stupidly hard to get Gems organically through gameplay, but it is super tedious and incredibly annoying. The easiest way you'll find is by completing "achievements", which are done by upgrading your place, in this case being the pancake shop. Now there are 3 sections to this, that being kitchen upgrades, interior upgrades, and decor. Kitchen upgrades and interior upgrades, funnily enough, use gems to even upgrade in the first place, making this method pretty redundant. Your reward for upgrading these is obviously better performance in the kitchen, as well as Fame Points, a complrtely useless metric only added to give you a slight sense of gratification once you hit it's goal, get your 2 gems as a reward, and restart it with a higher goal. The other method of getting gems is literally watching ads. For ONE GEM A PIECE. I am not joking, for a full 30 second Mistplay ad, in which I had to click FOUR SEPERATE X ICONS, I get one gem. And the best part is, I can't rapid fire these ads. No, for some godforsaken reason, they have a 40 second cooldown between them?? And that's not all, if you watch enough of them, it actually DISABLES the ads, practically FORCING you to buy more. Absolutely ridiculous. Now, to make all of this easier on you, not only can you buy currency, but (and I will give them credit for this,) it seems any purchase you make removes the intrusive ads from gameplay. And trust me, they are intrusive.
After every single level, without fail, there will be a 5 to 15 second ad. Every time. Not a single time without one. It's insane. But even better then all these microtransactions and ads clogging the gameplay loop, there's also a subscription model, oh boy! Yes yes, for TEN DOLLARS A WEEK, YOU CAN GET SOME MINOR BENEFITS. A WEEK??? Absolutely mind-boggling. What I find funny was when I actually started playing, I could increase my rewards after a level by 30% if I watched an ad, which I thought wasn't too bad of an implementation, but when I got on again later that night, poof! Gone! No ad option! ONLY the SUBSCRIPTION option!
Oh don't worry, that's not all. If you want to get Gems, but can't get your hands on mommy's credit card, don't worry, because you can get them for free through other means than watching ads. That's right, they implemented a "feature" where you can fill out extremely sketchy sweepstakes with a bunch of personal information, as well as play other mobile games you don't like for extremely long periods of time, all for a handful of gems! Isn't this great kids, I love wasting my time and giving my data to strangers on the internet!
And as if ALL of this predatory behavior wasn't enough, they have a daily reward system. Each day you play, you get this like piggy bank coin thing? After I think 7 days of consecutive play, you can either choose to get the pitiful free reward, that being 200 coins and 2 gems (to put in perspective, I've gotten as much as 1850 coins in a level before), or, and here's the best part, you can pay $3.99 FOR 5X MORE REWARDS. ABSOLUTELY INSANE. THE AMOUNT OF MONEY HUNGRY PRACTICES THEY STUFF DOWN YOUR THROAT IS MIND BLOWING. I HAVE NO WORDS.
Tl;dr, don't play, extremely predatory, reptitive, and boring. Easy 1/5. I only won't put .5/5 because while it is terrible, the game at least functions in the actual gameplay department, which I will give them the half star props for.
2014
Genre defining.
2017
bedrock edition boooooo
2021
Why is this on this site.
1989
Excellent original Tetris if it weren't for the broken RNG. No this isn't placebo, the code is quite literally broken and sometimes ot will go in "piece loops" where youll get the same pieces over and over and over again until it just... fixes itself.
2014
This review contains spoilers
tl;dr I think this game is perfect, the puzzles have just the right mix between satisfaction, complexity and a feeling of progression, the story is outstanding especially in how it’s told, the polish is on another level from most other mobile developers on the market, and I would recommend this to absolutely anyone looking for a quality experience on mobile.
Coming into Monument Valley, I went in completely blind, having no idea what this game was about in any way. Within seconds, I immediately not only had an instant idea of my main goal and what type of game this is, but was also taken aback by the absolute polish this game has. It's minimalist yet isn't failing in delivering exactly what it wants too, resulting in an incredibly stylistic art style. The calming music, the sound of the first rotating platform and how it locks in place as Ida walks across, Ida's footsteps themselves, all having an incredible feeling of quality that I've never felt in a mobile game up to this point. It's safe to say that immediately from just opening the app for the first time, Monument Valley succeeds in providing an extremely peaceful atmosphere, and sucks you in as soon as you start playing.
Going through the second chapter, The Garden, it becomes apparent that there's an underlying story to this series of puzzles, revolving around Ida. The chapter's description states In which Ida embarks on a quest for forgiveness, setting up a plot exposition simply but effectively. When finishing the level, Ida takes off her hat and seemingly returns a shape to its place in this (what can be inferred as a) monument. The vagueness in its storytelling provides a layer of curiosity, which I enjoy for the sake of my small brain's attention span. I also notice at the end of the chapter the ability to take a screenshot of it, reinforcing the developer's intentions of making each chapter seem as if it could work as an individual art piece. Even the chapter selection is top tier minimalism, with no actual text ever being shown, simply a monument with roman numerals representing chapters.
Chapter III, Hidden Garden. Ida has an unexpected meetingWe are introduced to moving platforms, as well as going into buildings to appear in other entrances floors upward. After pressing a button, we go inside the second tower, except instead of appearing somewhere else, we stay inside, with nothing but black and some platforms surrounding us. The feeling of being separated from the world we were just in is apparent, and subtle things like the reverb in Ida's footsteps add to that. The contrast from what I was just doing gives me a feeling I can't really describe, but what I do know is that it just makes me want to play more. We see a ghostly blue figure taller than Ida, saying Long have these old bones waited in darkness. How far have you wandered, silent princess? Why are you here? As more platforms arise, I become even more curious as to the story behind Ida. We learn she is a Princess, though I'm only left with more questions afterwards. Reaching the end of the chapter, Ida places another cube down. I wonder what those are, what their significance is.
Chapter IV, Water Palace. Ida discovers new ways to walk. The scenery is very different, invoking Japanese inspiration with its aesthetic. I'm now seemingly surrounded by water, but not entirely sure why. Stepping on a switch however, reveals the meaning of this chapter's description, as the platform I was standing on rotates, but Ida stays put, now standing sideways, unaffected by gravity. This opens up a whole new way to traverse the area, now walking up walls and sideways stairways. It feels very fitting with the isometric puzzler theme the game has for itself, and I completely welcome it. Pressing another switch, now we can move the level around to change our viewpoint, now opening up a whole new portion of the level previously unseen. There's a waterfall on this side, further heightening the peaceful vibe that the game tries to give off, while also being fitting to the chapter's scenery. More so than just opening up the level, moving it around also provides new solutions to puzzles and traveling to what previously seemed like unreachable places. Entering inside the level once again, we find the same blue figure from earlier, seemingly waiting for us. This was the valley of men. Now all that remains are our monuments, stripped of their glories. Thieving princess, why have you returned? Thieving princess.. Based off this, it would be reasonable to assume Ida has stolen the cubes that she's been placing on the tops of monuments at the ends of chapters, and has now returned for an unexplained reason.
This extremely vague storytelling is brilliant, because it doesn't directly answer any of the questions you wonder, but once you put some thought into it, you can come to a feasible conclusion. At the same time, these answers are told through more questions, always keeping that sense of curiosity and wonder with me. It's brilliantly captivating.
We still say nothing to this blue figure, simply leaving the area, coming back outside, and placing another shape, this time being a rhombohedron.
Chapter V, The Spire. Ida encounters the bothersome crow people. I've been seeing these crows in the past two chapters, but I was never able to interact with them, besides a simple tap making them squawk a bit louder. Walking up to them, they definitely live up to the description, standing still and repeatedly squawking at Ida until we walk away from them. It seems pretty obvious that we must avoid these in order to feasibly make it along the paths the game wants us to take. We go inside yet again, this time what would normally be a black void surrounding us, being a somewhat more comforting dark blue-ish violet. There's no plot continuation in this chapter, but I'm personally okay with that, considering how unique this chapter's aesthetic is compared to the previous ones.
Chapter VI, The Labyrinth. Ida meets a totem, a friend. Beginning in an unknown room, we walk towards three pillars simply sitting there. As we stand between them, a fourth pillar rises up in yellow, this being the totem. The totem helps raise us up to the surface, with yet another beautiful and unique mix of colors compared to previous chapters. I think these are my favorite puzzles so far, and definitely the most unique in my opinion. It almost feels like I'm controlling two different characters at times, kind of forming a companionship between Ida and the Totem. Finishing the chapter, Ida puts down another piece unto the monument, and the platform she's standing on lowers. She then floats away in the ocean, seemingly on purpose. I wonder what her goal is. The totem tries to follow along, but sadly, the further he goes into the ocean, the lower under the waves he is, until he disappears. It honestly pulled at my heart, which I know sounds silly because he's quite literally just a pillar, but even that little eyeball on the side of it just gave him enough expression for me to attach a bond to him, and I know that was definitely intentional. Farewell Totem, I'll miss you.
Chapter VII, The Rookery. In which a throne lies vacant. Interestingly enough, the start of this chapter lies in directing one of the crow people to press a button. I wonder where Ida is, possibly still yet to arrive from the ocean. After pressing a button with the crow however, a block rotates and she appears. I wonder why it was decided to start with one of the Crow people in this chapter. We get to enter inside once again, only to find that blue figure, once again. Those who stole our sacred geometry have forgotten their true selves. Cursed to walk these monuments are they. Foolish Princess, have you forgotten too? From this, it seems we can infer that other people also have stolen geometry from these monuments, and the Princess was one of many. However, unlike the many others, she has come back to return them. I wonder why that is. Scaling a castle, we return one more piece of geometry, this time not so much looking like a shape as it does some kind of constellation in its visual properties.
Chapter VIII, The Box. There lie strange delights. We are met with simply a box. No Ida, no crow people, but a large box. We can open the box however, and that reveals a Crow, trapped from inside. It turns out you can actually open the box in multiple ways, each revealing a seperate puzzle to light up each corner. Lighting up all corners, more puzzles appear.
I think this easily has to be the most creative chapter in the game so far purely from a puzzle standpoint, because I could’ve never thought of this, nor have I seen a puzzle game do this before. To be able to fit so much into one screen of real estate and still make it fully work is crazy, let alone making each puzzle enjoyable to go through and feel like you’re making progress, even for someone as bad at puzzles as me. This theme of using this one box for as much content as possible is even further stretched here, as while it seems just like the cube has opened on two sides, you can actually raise the other sides to reveal even more area, almost like a little diorama. Just when you think you’re about to finish the level since you can see the end right there, entering a doorway that seemingly leads straight to it, another small room raises up. I can’t even be annoyed because the game just feels so rewarding to play, on top of feeling complex due to how much scenery is on screen at once, even though in the grand scheme of things this is probably a standard difficulty puzzle game. We go up one staircase, press a button for more stairs, press another button and the room gets even taller, providing a smooth curve for you to walk up. Press another button on the side of the wall you’re walking on, and that piece you’re standing on raises up even higher, and finally reveals the exit door to the level. And at the end of it all, one final switch to put everything back into place. Everything back into that one small box. Absolutely beautiful level design.
Chapter IX, The Descent. In which there is nobody left to forgive us. We’re back in the ocean, on what appears to be a stormy night. A flower is on our island, so we pick it up. As we go lower on the raft, more of it slowly appears. After some more puzzling, the storm finally passes. We are now in daylight. But most importantly, Totem is back. He helps us get inside our rock formation, and now we descend. We go lower and lower, and eventually climb down to a lonely staircase. The colors have changed. What once was beaming with oranges and seemed somewhat lively, is now dark and grayscale, with very long staircases going down and minimal puzzles. A platform takes us even further down, to a platform with a mirror. We look to the mirror, but instead of seeing Ida, we see some kind of bird flapping its wings staying afloat, with a crown on the top of its head. We leave about as soon as we meet our reflection, only being used for a simple pathway puzzle to figure out what’s blocking our way. We climb further downward. That blue figure is down here. Long ages lie heavy on old bones in these buried halls. Sacred geometry was our pride, our downfall. But forever will our monuments stand in this valley. We go further. Finally, we reach the bottom. Here lies what seem to be hundreds of coffins, possibly of the people who ruled with this secret geometry before their downfall. There are stairs that lead up to one elevated coffin, so we go up. When we go up, we simply drop the flower next to the coffin. And the chapter ends, moving onto the last chapter of the base game.
Chapter X, Observatory. In which at journey’s end what was not meant for us is all returned. We seem to be in some kind of space setting, very unlike any other chapter in the game. Moving past the first area, we go higher. This time, it feels more like we’re simply floating in the sky. Then, we go back down to the first area. The only difference is one light is now lit up. There are two other entrances, so we can assume these areas are to light up the other lights. The level exit appears once we light them all up, and the chapter is completed.
But then, a cutscene starts. The Crow People begin walking all around Ida, who is standing on one block. The Crow People begin turning pink by some blue aura in the sky. All different colors, in fact. And they all begin flying, something they were never able to do when black. The blue aura changed into the crown that was on the bird from the mirror, and is placed on Ida. Just like that, she turns into said bird, and flies along with all the transformed Crows.
This is such a beautiful cutscene in my opinion, and it ties everything together so perfectly. The beauty really comes from how much it’s up to interpretation, and how you can really put it together however you think of it and it’ll still work. That being said, the true meaning behind this cutscene is still wonderful. The Crows were actually people who stole Geometry, and were stripped of their flying abilities as punishment due to Ida stealing the geometry. Since the Geometry has been brought back, the beams coming down have changed the Crows back to their original forms. That mirror section from earlier was actually hinting at Ida’s true original form, and how she was close to changing back to who she truly was. Ida stole this geometry due to her fascination with the humans who held it, and as a result, caused her following to be punished for her actions.
The only complaint I could possibly give this game was that it was a little short, but later on, it was supported with DLC to extend the story, which pretty much nullifies that. I truly think pretty much everything about this game is perfect, especially in what it sets out to do, and the polish is on another level from the average shovelware or even super popular free games on the Play Store. I would 1000% recommend this to anyone looking for something to play on mobile, even if you aren’t a puzzle person. Gladly giving this 5 stars.
Coming into Monument Valley, I went in completely blind, having no idea what this game was about in any way. Within seconds, I immediately not only had an instant idea of my main goal and what type of game this is, but was also taken aback by the absolute polish this game has. It's minimalist yet isn't failing in delivering exactly what it wants too, resulting in an incredibly stylistic art style. The calming music, the sound of the first rotating platform and how it locks in place as Ida walks across, Ida's footsteps themselves, all having an incredible feeling of quality that I've never felt in a mobile game up to this point. It's safe to say that immediately from just opening the app for the first time, Monument Valley succeeds in providing an extremely peaceful atmosphere, and sucks you in as soon as you start playing.
Going through the second chapter, The Garden, it becomes apparent that there's an underlying story to this series of puzzles, revolving around Ida. The chapter's description states In which Ida embarks on a quest for forgiveness, setting up a plot exposition simply but effectively. When finishing the level, Ida takes off her hat and seemingly returns a shape to its place in this (what can be inferred as a) monument. The vagueness in its storytelling provides a layer of curiosity, which I enjoy for the sake of my small brain's attention span. I also notice at the end of the chapter the ability to take a screenshot of it, reinforcing the developer's intentions of making each chapter seem as if it could work as an individual art piece. Even the chapter selection is top tier minimalism, with no actual text ever being shown, simply a monument with roman numerals representing chapters.
Chapter III, Hidden Garden. Ida has an unexpected meetingWe are introduced to moving platforms, as well as going into buildings to appear in other entrances floors upward. After pressing a button, we go inside the second tower, except instead of appearing somewhere else, we stay inside, with nothing but black and some platforms surrounding us. The feeling of being separated from the world we were just in is apparent, and subtle things like the reverb in Ida's footsteps add to that. The contrast from what I was just doing gives me a feeling I can't really describe, but what I do know is that it just makes me want to play more. We see a ghostly blue figure taller than Ida, saying Long have these old bones waited in darkness. How far have you wandered, silent princess? Why are you here? As more platforms arise, I become even more curious as to the story behind Ida. We learn she is a Princess, though I'm only left with more questions afterwards. Reaching the end of the chapter, Ida places another cube down. I wonder what those are, what their significance is.
Chapter IV, Water Palace. Ida discovers new ways to walk. The scenery is very different, invoking Japanese inspiration with its aesthetic. I'm now seemingly surrounded by water, but not entirely sure why. Stepping on a switch however, reveals the meaning of this chapter's description, as the platform I was standing on rotates, but Ida stays put, now standing sideways, unaffected by gravity. This opens up a whole new way to traverse the area, now walking up walls and sideways stairways. It feels very fitting with the isometric puzzler theme the game has for itself, and I completely welcome it. Pressing another switch, now we can move the level around to change our viewpoint, now opening up a whole new portion of the level previously unseen. There's a waterfall on this side, further heightening the peaceful vibe that the game tries to give off, while also being fitting to the chapter's scenery. More so than just opening up the level, moving it around also provides new solutions to puzzles and traveling to what previously seemed like unreachable places. Entering inside the level once again, we find the same blue figure from earlier, seemingly waiting for us. This was the valley of men. Now all that remains are our monuments, stripped of their glories. Thieving princess, why have you returned? Thieving princess.. Based off this, it would be reasonable to assume Ida has stolen the cubes that she's been placing on the tops of monuments at the ends of chapters, and has now returned for an unexplained reason.
This extremely vague storytelling is brilliant, because it doesn't directly answer any of the questions you wonder, but once you put some thought into it, you can come to a feasible conclusion. At the same time, these answers are told through more questions, always keeping that sense of curiosity and wonder with me. It's brilliantly captivating.
We still say nothing to this blue figure, simply leaving the area, coming back outside, and placing another shape, this time being a rhombohedron.
Chapter V, The Spire. Ida encounters the bothersome crow people. I've been seeing these crows in the past two chapters, but I was never able to interact with them, besides a simple tap making them squawk a bit louder. Walking up to them, they definitely live up to the description, standing still and repeatedly squawking at Ida until we walk away from them. It seems pretty obvious that we must avoid these in order to feasibly make it along the paths the game wants us to take. We go inside yet again, this time what would normally be a black void surrounding us, being a somewhat more comforting dark blue-ish violet. There's no plot continuation in this chapter, but I'm personally okay with that, considering how unique this chapter's aesthetic is compared to the previous ones.
Chapter VI, The Labyrinth. Ida meets a totem, a friend. Beginning in an unknown room, we walk towards three pillars simply sitting there. As we stand between them, a fourth pillar rises up in yellow, this being the totem. The totem helps raise us up to the surface, with yet another beautiful and unique mix of colors compared to previous chapters. I think these are my favorite puzzles so far, and definitely the most unique in my opinion. It almost feels like I'm controlling two different characters at times, kind of forming a companionship between Ida and the Totem. Finishing the chapter, Ida puts down another piece unto the monument, and the platform she's standing on lowers. She then floats away in the ocean, seemingly on purpose. I wonder what her goal is. The totem tries to follow along, but sadly, the further he goes into the ocean, the lower under the waves he is, until he disappears. It honestly pulled at my heart, which I know sounds silly because he's quite literally just a pillar, but even that little eyeball on the side of it just gave him enough expression for me to attach a bond to him, and I know that was definitely intentional. Farewell Totem, I'll miss you.
Chapter VII, The Rookery. In which a throne lies vacant. Interestingly enough, the start of this chapter lies in directing one of the crow people to press a button. I wonder where Ida is, possibly still yet to arrive from the ocean. After pressing a button with the crow however, a block rotates and she appears. I wonder why it was decided to start with one of the Crow people in this chapter. We get to enter inside once again, only to find that blue figure, once again. Those who stole our sacred geometry have forgotten their true selves. Cursed to walk these monuments are they. Foolish Princess, have you forgotten too? From this, it seems we can infer that other people also have stolen geometry from these monuments, and the Princess was one of many. However, unlike the many others, she has come back to return them. I wonder why that is. Scaling a castle, we return one more piece of geometry, this time not so much looking like a shape as it does some kind of constellation in its visual properties.
Chapter VIII, The Box. There lie strange delights. We are met with simply a box. No Ida, no crow people, but a large box. We can open the box however, and that reveals a Crow, trapped from inside. It turns out you can actually open the box in multiple ways, each revealing a seperate puzzle to light up each corner. Lighting up all corners, more puzzles appear.
I think this easily has to be the most creative chapter in the game so far purely from a puzzle standpoint, because I could’ve never thought of this, nor have I seen a puzzle game do this before. To be able to fit so much into one screen of real estate and still make it fully work is crazy, let alone making each puzzle enjoyable to go through and feel like you’re making progress, even for someone as bad at puzzles as me. This theme of using this one box for as much content as possible is even further stretched here, as while it seems just like the cube has opened on two sides, you can actually raise the other sides to reveal even more area, almost like a little diorama. Just when you think you’re about to finish the level since you can see the end right there, entering a doorway that seemingly leads straight to it, another small room raises up. I can’t even be annoyed because the game just feels so rewarding to play, on top of feeling complex due to how much scenery is on screen at once, even though in the grand scheme of things this is probably a standard difficulty puzzle game. We go up one staircase, press a button for more stairs, press another button and the room gets even taller, providing a smooth curve for you to walk up. Press another button on the side of the wall you’re walking on, and that piece you’re standing on raises up even higher, and finally reveals the exit door to the level. And at the end of it all, one final switch to put everything back into place. Everything back into that one small box. Absolutely beautiful level design.
Chapter IX, The Descent. In which there is nobody left to forgive us. We’re back in the ocean, on what appears to be a stormy night. A flower is on our island, so we pick it up. As we go lower on the raft, more of it slowly appears. After some more puzzling, the storm finally passes. We are now in daylight. But most importantly, Totem is back. He helps us get inside our rock formation, and now we descend. We go lower and lower, and eventually climb down to a lonely staircase. The colors have changed. What once was beaming with oranges and seemed somewhat lively, is now dark and grayscale, with very long staircases going down and minimal puzzles. A platform takes us even further down, to a platform with a mirror. We look to the mirror, but instead of seeing Ida, we see some kind of bird flapping its wings staying afloat, with a crown on the top of its head. We leave about as soon as we meet our reflection, only being used for a simple pathway puzzle to figure out what’s blocking our way. We climb further downward. That blue figure is down here. Long ages lie heavy on old bones in these buried halls. Sacred geometry was our pride, our downfall. But forever will our monuments stand in this valley. We go further. Finally, we reach the bottom. Here lies what seem to be hundreds of coffins, possibly of the people who ruled with this secret geometry before their downfall. There are stairs that lead up to one elevated coffin, so we go up. When we go up, we simply drop the flower next to the coffin. And the chapter ends, moving onto the last chapter of the base game.
Chapter X, Observatory. In which at journey’s end what was not meant for us is all returned. We seem to be in some kind of space setting, very unlike any other chapter in the game. Moving past the first area, we go higher. This time, it feels more like we’re simply floating in the sky. Then, we go back down to the first area. The only difference is one light is now lit up. There are two other entrances, so we can assume these areas are to light up the other lights. The level exit appears once we light them all up, and the chapter is completed.
But then, a cutscene starts. The Crow People begin walking all around Ida, who is standing on one block. The Crow People begin turning pink by some blue aura in the sky. All different colors, in fact. And they all begin flying, something they were never able to do when black. The blue aura changed into the crown that was on the bird from the mirror, and is placed on Ida. Just like that, she turns into said bird, and flies along with all the transformed Crows.
This is such a beautiful cutscene in my opinion, and it ties everything together so perfectly. The beauty really comes from how much it’s up to interpretation, and how you can really put it together however you think of it and it’ll still work. That being said, the true meaning behind this cutscene is still wonderful. The Crows were actually people who stole Geometry, and were stripped of their flying abilities as punishment due to Ida stealing the geometry. Since the Geometry has been brought back, the beams coming down have changed the Crows back to their original forms. That mirror section from earlier was actually hinting at Ida’s true original form, and how she was close to changing back to who she truly was. Ida stole this geometry due to her fascination with the humans who held it, and as a result, caused her following to be punished for her actions.
The only complaint I could possibly give this game was that it was a little short, but later on, it was supported with DLC to extend the story, which pretty much nullifies that. I truly think pretty much everything about this game is perfect, especially in what it sets out to do, and the polish is on another level from the average shovelware or even super popular free games on the Play Store. I would 1000% recommend this to anyone looking for something to play on mobile, even if you aren’t a puzzle person. Gladly giving this 5 stars.
1980
Played here: https://itizso.itch.io/nintendo-ball
The game's okay I guess. While this is supposed to be a time waster, it still does get boring after a bit, and I think I've widdled that down to three things. One of these things is that after only a little bit, the speed of the balls seems to cap on me. I don't know exactly what score I got when it stopped speeding up but it had to be in the 30s on Game A or something like that. In my opinion that kind of defeated the challenge, and it began to bore me after a bit. The second thing though is what really does it in my opinion, and it's that when you hit 100 in Game A, the speed resets. I'm not too sure if that's just this emulator's fault, but this creator has the other Game & Watch games on his account and they all seem pretty high quality, so I'm inclined to believe it's actually due to the tech itself. You really feel it start to slog once the speed resets, so after I got to 100 I made myself lose just so I could move onto Game B. After losing a few times on Game B however (just to see what the loss graphics looked like, im not bad I swear), I noticed the third thing that really detracts from the experience for me, and it's that I think these ball patterns are pre-programmed. I tried on a different emulator and my Game A paths were the same as on the browser, and they were the same paths each time, and in my opinion I just don't think that's good design, because now it doesn't become so much of a skill based time waster, it just becomes something that somebody can memorize and then go forever for. While this is a classic in the world of old Nintendo, it's not worth spending too much time over. (btw my Game B high score was 1000 before I stopped, see, I'm competent)
The game's okay I guess. While this is supposed to be a time waster, it still does get boring after a bit, and I think I've widdled that down to three things. One of these things is that after only a little bit, the speed of the balls seems to cap on me. I don't know exactly what score I got when it stopped speeding up but it had to be in the 30s on Game A or something like that. In my opinion that kind of defeated the challenge, and it began to bore me after a bit. The second thing though is what really does it in my opinion, and it's that when you hit 100 in Game A, the speed resets. I'm not too sure if that's just this emulator's fault, but this creator has the other Game & Watch games on his account and they all seem pretty high quality, so I'm inclined to believe it's actually due to the tech itself. You really feel it start to slog once the speed resets, so after I got to 100 I made myself lose just so I could move onto Game B. After losing a few times on Game B however (just to see what the loss graphics looked like, im not bad I swear), I noticed the third thing that really detracts from the experience for me, and it's that I think these ball patterns are pre-programmed. I tried on a different emulator and my Game A paths were the same as on the browser, and they were the same paths each time, and in my opinion I just don't think that's good design, because now it doesn't become so much of a skill based time waster, it just becomes something that somebody can memorize and then go forever for. While this is a classic in the world of old Nintendo, it's not worth spending too much time over. (btw my Game B high score was 1000 before I stopped, see, I'm competent)