Hey again Time Wasters!
As you may remember me mentioning in my review two weeks back, I’ve been spending a lot of time playing console games instead of little flash ones. However, I still make sure to take time out of my daily wyvern slaying routine to find things online for you guys to enjoy. This week I’m taking a step away from the more action packed and adventurous genre that I’ve been clocking several hours into, and am instead looking into the one that tests a different set of skills. That’s just a fancy way of saying that this week I’m reviewing a puzzle game.
Not that I’m growing tired of hacking and slashing my way to victory, but I felt like doing something different than what I’ve been doing every day of the week. So I give you Push Me, a game that involves pushing blocks around so that you can push one block into the right hole. That may have sounded a little confusing, so let me clear that up.
In Push Me there are several pieces to the puzzle, all of them being blocks of different sizes that can only slide one of two ways: up and down or left and right. These blocks cannot go through each other, so if you’ve got a block in the way of the one you want to move, better find out how to move the obstacle first. Out of all the blocks on screen, there is only one that you cannot interact with: a red square. This red square is the key to winning the puzzle. On every level your pieces are contained within a square space, and there is one spot in the square space that juts out of one of its sides. That is where you need to slide the red block into. How you do that is dependent on what blocks you have and how they move. So better start pushing those pieces around.
And that’s all you get in Push Me: a straightforward puzzle whose levels can range from easy to hard and grow even harder the farther you get into the game. And for something like this, that’s all you need since it’s still able to make you stop and really think (even if it does have really simple mechanics).
Moving on from the game’s puzzle element, let’s take a look at those other parts that make up a game: the visuals, music, etcetera. This is where I feel Push Me falls a little flat. One of the biggest things I had a complaint with is the background choice. In my opinion, the background’s art was more eye catching than the puzzle itself. This didn’t make the game look better, it only made things distracting and harder to look at. And when you’re already trying to concentrate on the puzzle, you don’t need the background making it harder on you.
The music was also a little off to me. It’s not the type of music I would set down for someone to think and figure out puzzles to. It wasn’t the worst thing, but it definitely wasn’t the best. The only other thing I found myself wishing for was a reset button right on the puzzle screen rather than in the pause menu, but that’s only something minor considering the other things I’ve already mentioned.
So even though Push Me has a couple small strikes against it in terms of design, it’s still a game that accomplishes its goal of making you think and putting your brain to use. It’s nothing we haven’t really seen before, but that doesn’t make it any less fun for those of you who are up for this kind of challenge. Plus it has 100 levels, so you won’t be running out of brain exercises any time soon.
Push Me earns 2.5 GiN Gems out of 5.