Did you like the old school Zelda games? This is like that.
So then, this game tells the story Ittle, a young lass with a thirst for adventure, and her constantly drinking companion Tippsie, a.... thing
Seriously what the fuck do you call that? It's like a linoone from poken'mon with a set of bee wings taped to its back. Well anyway that's Tippsie, he doesn't really do much aside from berate you for not being smart enough to solve the occasional puzzle and inform you if a room is solvable based upon your equipment loadout.
There's not a lot of story to speak of so I'll do as the game did and pretty much ignore it. The gameplay is fairly simple. Most of your time will be spent dispatching the few variants of foes and messing with lots and lots and lots of blocks. Stone blocks, portal blocks, ice blocks, cracked blocks, stone blocks you can't push. Also yeah, there is no pull. The lack of ability to pull blocks makes some puzzles much more complicated. Cracked blocks can be exploded with bombs. Ice blocks can be destroyed with fire and depress switches. Portal blocks can be used to depress switches or help teleport objects and creatures.
The basic layout of the game involves going into the very Zelda looking castle and solving puzzles there until you collect enough money to buy a new piece of gear. There are three pieces of gear to buy; the fire sword, the ice staff, and the portal wand. One thing that I do think is pretty cool about the game is that it is actually possible to complete the game with any two of the three pieces of gear. I opted for fire sword and portal wand and told the ice staff some unpleasant things about it's mother and that I didn't want to see it again. The option to avoid one piece of the available gear does help give some incentive to replay the game after completing it. Which, and I know some people will be bothered about this, is probably a good thing, cause the game is a bit short. My (almost) blind run through of it clocked in at just under three hours. In fairness I didn't find all the collectable cards, all the heart pieces, do either of the optional dungeons, was able to entirely skip the ice staff dungeon, and found a shortcut to skip almost all of the portal wand dungeon. So I did have what would be a fairly quick pass through the game, but I was also gimped in not having one of the gear items which also slowed me down some. I'm not too bitter about the length of it, and I may at some point go back and play through the game a couple more times or at least take my existing save and try to get the rest of the cards and heart pieces and do the optional dungeons.
Some of the puzzles can be a bit complicated and there is a "master cave" which is presumably filled with super tough puzzles. As I mentioned I haven't done this yet, but I'd at least buy the ice staff before trying that shit. The combat is very simple. You have one attack: swing the point bit of your sword at the other guy (Or bash him with the stick if you don't have the sword). The ice wand may also be used in combat but I can't say for sure. In the event that you should die, there's basically no consequence, save the room you're in being reset. Enemies are in some instances used as a puzzle mechanic or a little arena room with some reward for killing them all, but more often than not, wind up really just being a kind of annoying housekeeping you have to deal with before solving the puzzle, especially the pancake fuckers that eat bombs. Yes there is an enemy that looks like pancakes. Yes really.
The art style... well look at the images above and you'll have a good idea whether you're going to like it or not. I thought it looked fine. It is a fairly easy game (remember I haven't done the master cave, maybe all the difficulty is in there) so if you're looking for a challenge you might not want to pick this one up. And yes it is somewhat short and the $10 price tag may make some people say that it's not enough, but the option of redoing the game with a different gear set to make you resolve rooms differently helps to add replayability, and honestly, if you compare the concept of $10 for a three hour game to something like going to the movies, which is going to be more expensive, last less time, require you to put on pants and drive to the theater, and be non-interactive, then I'd say the price tag isn't too bad. But if you had ten bucks and were trying to decide between this and FTL I'd tell you to buy FTL. There's just more for the money there.
On the whole it's well made, if a touch light on content. But it doesn't overstay it's welcome and if you want to get your money's worth you can redo the game each time leaving out one of the three items, then take all three for a victory lap. Go for the master cave if you're feeling ballsy and want to prove to your friends you're some kind of brainiac. And for those of you who like things to be over quickly (I bet you're not much fun in bed) there's an achievement to complete the game in under 15 minutes.
Gameplay: 7.5 out of 10
Story: 4 out of 10
Visuals: 7 out of 10
Audio: 7 out of 10
Overall: 6.5 fucking block puzzles out of 10
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