Poorzzle - Puzzle Alive Review

Game: Poorzzle – Puzzle Alive
Genre: Puzzle
System: Steam (Windows)
Developer|Publisher: YMQWORKS
Controller Support: Full
Price: US $Free | UK £ Free | EU € Free
Release Date: March 13th, 2024

A review code was provided, and many thanks to YMQWORKS.

Poorzzle – Puzzle Alive is a little puzzle game that features different kinds of puzzles on each level. Each focuses on putting colored boxes in the right places with little help from the game.

The Gameplay of Poorzzle – Puzzle Alive

Poorzzle – Puzzle Alive is a free-to-play puzzle game that changes the puzzle at every level. You always have to interact with little squares, moving them around the screen or clicking them, but each puzzle is a little bit different. The first puzzle just requires you to move the box around, and then there’s a puzzle where you need to pick letters in boxes in a certain order. Half of the puzzle is figuring out how the puzzle works this time.

Three blocks, each a different color, are in a empty screen of gray. — Now, what do these do?

Puzzle number three is pretty illustrative of how a typical puzzle goes in Poorzzle – Puzzle Alive. As you can see above, it starts with three colorful squares; you have to figure out what these three do. If you click on them, they light up different colored lights above them, as seen in the screenshot below. So you then have to figure out what to do about that.

Three blocks, each a different color, are in an empty screen of gray. Two colored lights are above it. — Ahh, they turn on the lights.

Outside of the Box Isn’t Always a Good Idea

There is a reason why most puzzle games start with a simple version of a concept and then build on it, allowing the player to learn as they go. Poorzzle – Puzzle Alive, to its detriment, does not follow this idea very well. Going from one puzzle to the next is confusing, and most of the puzzles are rather uninspired. I liked a few of them, but a couple of the puzzles I was stuck on for a while. And when I finally figured it out, it wasn’t an “Ah hah!” kind of moment, but more like a “Really, game?” kind of moment.

There is a pretty fine line to walk to get the latter rather than the former, and Poorzzle – Puzzle Alive doesn’t walk it well. There are a couple of the puzzles that are interesting; I really liked level 3, for example. It was challenging, and it pushed me to think of the squares in a different way without overwhelming me or making it too easy. But for some of the puzzles I managed to complete, I’m still not sure exactly how I solved them.

An orange square is in the middle of an empty gray background. — What does that hint mean?

It didn’t help that the hint system, which you have to spend lives using, was less than helpful. “Wait for the rabbit to come to you” doesn’t mean anything to me. Even knowing the solution to this puzzle, this is not how I would have chosen to hint at the answer. It’s just not a good clue. And the hints for every single level are like this: overly obtuse word salad that doesn’t really often help to solve the puzzle. This may have been a language barrier thing; it’s pretty obvious that the creator’s first language is not English, so maybe it’s better in its native tongue to give hints.

A white box has "P@" written in it while two colored squares are below it, one orange with a 3 in it and one blue with an s in it. — I still don’t understand this puzzle, even after completing it.

Still Not Done

There are a total of 24 puzzles in Poorzzle – Puzzle Alive, each with a different flavor. They have odd little abstract artworks in between some of them, and they have a short statement that is read aloud by a child’s voice. These statements don’t seem actually to have anything to do with the puzzle game itself. I couldn’t finish all 24 levels because of the developer’s way of thinking, and mine just didn’t jive. It is not my cup of tea, to be sure, whether it is free or not, and I don’t understand why YMQWORKS felt the need to make it so difficult to understand. It felt a little like someone played Myst, Riven, or the Witness and misunderstood what made those games fun and interesting to play.

A spiral staircase leads up to the swirl of a conch shell in an abstract art kind of way. — I still don’t know what that means.

Conclusion

Poorzzle – Puzzle Alive is one of those puzzle games that is particularly frustrating. It’s clean, the action is great, and the sound design is okay, but the overall product is not as much fun as it could easily be. I was very disappointed with how this turned out, considering how good the basic idea, look, and feel of the game was. Free or not, I think this developer needs a few more playtesters and translation help.

Final Verdict: I’m Not Sure.