Game: Puzzle Wall
System: Switch
Publisher: Rainy Frog
Developer: BreakFirst
Price: $7.99 | £6.99 | € 7.99
Age rating: E for Everyone (ESRB) | 3+ (PEGI)
Release Date: 25 October 2018
Overall feeling:Â I’m not sure
Review code courtesy of Rainy Frog.
Having a party for kids? If you’re serving a medley of games, Puzzle Wall could be your light appetizer. A fun soundtrack gets the party mood going, but with the limited gameplay offered here, your guests will be hungry for more… of something else.
Find yourself in a pool of green goo
The concept is great: A wall is moving quickly towards you and there’s a person-shaped hole in it. Motion-sensor Joy-Cons in hand, you’ve gotta move your limbs to fit that person-shaped hole.
If you don’t fit right, the wall knocks you into a pool of green liquid that looks like toxic waste from a mad scientist’s lab.
While the graphics were hardly impressive, and certain wait-times lacked loading animation (to indicate that the game is loading, not freezing), one thing that Puzzle Wall does well is Joy-Con calibration, sensitivity, and accuracy.
Puzzle Wall promises solid game-show entertainment and might deliver on that promise with a group of young players (say, seven-year-olds?). But adults might quickly tire of the few game modes available.
In “Rapid Fire”, walls rush at you instead of gliding at a leisurely speed. In “Memory”, you must memorize a series of body poses. In “Reverse”, you must adjust mentally as your character flips direction.
And that is about all to Puzzle Wall.
Various modes to play
Playing alone is hardly fun (for an adult, at least), while playing in a group of four is best. With four players, each is randomly assigned a different arm or leg, and this changes every round, causing humorous panic and confusion.
Playing a “Versus” challenge (for two players) is also potentially fun: See who gets knocked out first for making too many mistakes.
But I felt the game offered little reason to keep playing. At least, not with the same group of people. Sure, the walls get faster and faster, offering more challenge the longer you survive a round. Yet there isn’t a deep sense of progression or hard-earned learning.
So you’ll want to supplement Puzzle Wall with other party games for your gaming session. Or add your own real-life rewards and punishments for how each player performs.
