Nintendo’s 3DS eShop is still at a very young stage, and it’s list of titles is not a very solid one, but now, there’s one 3DSWare title that stands out in the entire eShop, Pushmo. Pushmo is an action puzzle game developed by Intelligent Systems, the same studio behind many other successful titles including WarioWare, Paper Mario and Fire Emblem. In Pushmo, you are Mallo, the round hero of the game who must save children who are trapped in Pushmos. Pushmo is a set of blocks stacked up that can be pushed or pulled and leaped over. The goal is to get to the top of the Pushmo by pushing and pulling blocks to make a path and rescue the child trapped on the top.
Naturally, the game makes simple use of the glasses-free 3D of the system. Blocks can be pulled out for up to three levels deep, as they’re pulled out, they come closer to you. The 3DS pulls off this effect well. While the game does not have much to show off on the 3D end, this pull-out effect is simple yet effective. Apart from the simple 3D effect, the game uses a lively color scheme.
The game uses three simple actions; pushing, pulling and jumping. They may not sound like much but the game’s pushmos do make for a brain teaser. The game is more than pulling out a few blocks to form a staircase, sometimes you will find yourself having to push blocks back in, change your position, just pull a block out from the side or just simple stop to think about it. Completing a level in Pushmo feels satisfying and leaves you wanting to keep venturing into more levels. Sometimes, you may get stuck on a stage and might want to come back to it later, thankfully, you have the option of skipping a level, moving on and then come back to it later. Apart from the simple push-pull-jump actions, the game also has a few extra toppings; each stage has a reset button if you wish to start over and there’s also the option of rewinding some seconds of time in a level if you wish to undo a single mistake that’s preventing you from moving on.
The game’s campaign is fully fleshed with more than 250 levels of Pushmos to figure out and children to rescue. However, the fun doesn’t stop at the campaign, there is Pushmo Studio, unlocked upon completing the welcoming tutorial. The Studio allows you to create your own stages of Pushmos, and not only that, you can generate QR Codes of your created levels to share with people around you or on the internet. This is a great feature because apart from the hours people will get from the campaign, they’ll most likely get even more hours out of the time spent in the Studio making their own stages, exchanging puzzles with other people and figuring out user-created stages.
While this is a very minor complaint, it would have been great if SpotPass support was added in to Pushmo as it would have made for an even greater fun for exchanging puzzles with people you tag while on the go. Again, this is very minor compared with all the fun Pushmo already offers.
Conclusion
The arrival of Pushmo on the eShop shows the potential the eShop has for a line-up of great titles, while there isn’t to get from it now, Pushmo is a title you definitely have to pick up if you own a Nintendo 3DS. The game’s simple colorful look and the countless hours of puzzling fun the campaign brings and the potential to spend even more time with user-created stage makes Pushmo a no-brainer if you’re wondering to pick it up.
9.5
Recent Comments