Game: Dabado Puzzles
Genre: Difficult, Puzzle, Adventure, Philosophical
System: Steam
Developer | Publisher: 7Games
Price: US $17.99 | UK £13.99 | EU € 14,99
Release Date: June 30th 2021
Review code used with many thanks to 7Games.
Dabado Puzzles is a intriguing new game from 7Games. This game is loaded with difficult stacking puzzles, gorgeous artwork, and is one of the hardest games I have ever played. The colorful exterior and whimsical artwork belies what’s underneath: puzzles so hard you’ll be tearing your hair out.
The Story
The game doesn’t have much in the way of story, but what story exists is frontloaded onto the player by a barrage of text right in the beginning. You play as an explorer, searching a sunny island filled with trees, secrets, and magical objects. The Holy Grail is said to be hidden on this island, and it will take a seasoned puzzle solver to get to it.

The Tutorial
After this short introduction, players are introduced to the tutorial. It comes in the form of bubble of text that pop on on the screen, feeding you the information needed to complete the puzzles and win the game. Sort of.
The tutorial is sparse. While it does a decent job of explaining that players have Light, a limited resource that allows you to unlock levels, it doesn’t give you a feeling of just how hard it will be to make up the 45 whole Light points players are required to give up, just to reach the first stage. Not to mention the other 33 points to open the store. The starting amount of Light is just 150, and most levels in the beginning will only earn players 1-10 Light per play.
The Mechanics
Honestly, the mechanics of the game are not explained very well, and it took about three tries to even figure out what all the different pieces do. The rounds always start with a “Heavy” piece; this grayish, rock-with-an-eyeball will smash through any other kind of pieces, destroying any height you may have built up, so they should only be used on the very bottom dotted line or stacked on top of one another.
The second kind of piece is a “Medium” piece. If the gray, Heavy pieces are a metaphorical trunk of a tree, the Mediums would be its branches. They can be stacked on one another, reaching out to the edges of the screen or up as high as the player wishes. There are also “Light” pieces, which are a bit like the leaves. They will break against each other and shatter if players attempt to stack anything on top of them. This breaking of pieces can be a negative to the player, or it can be utilized to strategically garner more points.

The Difficulty
This game ramps up the difficultly by severely limiting the number of pieces the player has to work with while giving them several objects to connect to. There are a limited number of levels, but players will have to continuously return to older levels in order to collect Light, find secrets, and find keys to unlocking future levels.

Players also need to go back to old levels to collect Buttons, the incredibly rare currency for the item shop. In the shop are things like Light points that players can buy, power ups, and other useful items. The shop’s stock grows as you move through the levels, bringing new things to save your buttons for.
The Pros
Dabado is a surreal and beautiful game. Each of the images is hand-painted with watercolors or hand-drawn with colored pencils. The backgrounds, characters, and map are all strange but lovingly rendered, and everything in Dabado is obviously a work of love. On the developer’s Facebook page, it states that this game is a seven-year-long project. And all that labor and heart really shines through.
Each level has unique, relaxing music, colorful, hand-painted backgrounds, and a feeling of being somewhere not of this world.

The puzzles are frustrating and fun. It can take a long time to understand how a puzzle will come together, how to grab all the objects needed to complete the level, or how to connect the dots when the pieces drop randomly. But completing a level is massively satisfying, and it makes you want to continue onto the next challenge.
The secrets are very well hidden, and require some really out of the box thinking to collect them. For example, one secret could only be revealed if you break a certain number of Medium blocks with a Heavy block.
The Cons
The learning curve of this game is so incredibly steep, it’s hard to even know where to start. The tutorial is not super explicit; it took several failures before I even learned basic mechanics. The RNG monster (random number generation) strikes hard in Dabado. Since the pieces are completely random each time, there are just some times that levels are not completable.

There is no hint system, no difficulty settings, and no free mode to test out how things work. Players have to learn on the fly, making bad decisions on top of bad decisions until the stars align and give them the pieces they need in an order they can be used effectively.
That kind of complete randomness is one of the biggest detractions to the game, especially in the beginning when you have no booster items to help out. While this makes actually beating a level absolutely feel like a massive, hard-won victory, it can be so frustrating that I needed to walk away from the game for a while.

There is a grid that decides if a piece close enough to pick up an item, but that grid is hidden from the player’s view. Since the pieces are organic shapes, it can be difficult to figure out if the piece will be close enough to pick up the object or not.
The number one worst part of the game was definitely the way the levels are laid out. After defeating the difficult level 1, level 2, and finally having enough Light to unlock level 3, I had to go back to an updated level 1 to find the keys for the 3rd stage. It felt demoralizing; after working so hard to get where I was, only to be pushed back to the beginning of the map. The game would benefit from a system of hidden levels branching off of the old ones instead of overlaying older levels.

Conclusion
Dabado Puzzles is a challenging, beautiful puzzle game filled with difficult levels and amazing artwork. The surreal paintings coupled with the music, the organic puzzle pieces, and the massive amount of love and effort obviously put into it make it a wonderful thing to behold. The difficulty level is not for everyone, however, and many would be deterred by not only the RNG and lack of proper tutorial, but also having to play the same levels over and over again.
That being said, it’s a must-have for those who love to conquer a big puzzle challenge and come out on top after many, many failures.
Final Verdict: I Like it.