It's honestly incredible how they reinvented Pushmo with a few simple changes. Every block is now its own chunk of the puzzle, and can be moved independently around the playing field, and they're also affected by gravity. It's honestly one of the coolest puzzle games I've ever played, requiring you to think in three dimensions, about what chunks should be used as a footholds, what you need to push them around/against to get them where they need to be without fucking everything else up. There's just one problem...
Crashmo is hard.
In the earliest stages of the game, Papa Blox sits on the sidelines and will inform you if a move you've made has completely ruined your ability to finish the puzzle. Frankly, with how complex this game's puzzles are, I feel like there ought to have been an option to let you know this during any puzzle. I neglected to mention this in my review of the previous game, but by actively playing a puzzle for long enough, the pause button will flash, and the option to skip that puzzle will unlock on the pause menu. In Crashmo, you can just skip a puzzle at any time. Skipping doesn't feel completely necessary in Pushmo, but there are points in Crashmo where it'll feel damn near mandatory. That being said, the fact that it's so hard is it's biggest strength...
Finishing puzzles in Crashmo feels incredible.
Every move you make feels deliberate. You have to think several steps ahead as you make your moves. You can trial-and-error parts of a puzzle, but you really need to make sure you're not fucking yourself over in the long run. Y'see, there's a little trick that Crashmo uses in its challenge stages: Sometimes blocks are color-coded in a way that subtly tells you to move them in a certain way. By proxy, the themeing dynamic from the first game is now completely flipped; "Challenge" levels are logic puzzles, and "Mural" levels are chaotic tests of spatial awareness. There's a good reason why the game waits until puzzle 81 of 100 to bring the pixel art murals in. That's where the training wheels come off. They're also where several parts of the mural come off, seeing as gravity is now a factor, and the pixel art rarely maintains its shape after it drops in. Now you have to view the shapes and make your own judgements. Apparently, that level of abstraction is where my brain begins to melt.
Crashmo is fucking HARD.
...however, I think it accomplishes what a puzzle game should do: Make every solution satisfying.
The presentation is roughly in line with Pushmo, but there's a little bit more personality everywhere. Papa Blox's granddaughter Poppy comes to visit, and Mallo is smitten. So smitten in fact that he does a rad sumo pose and unintentionally scares off all 100 birds she rode in on. Good job idiot, now you gotta push blocks again to get the birds back. You can check on the birds you've rescued and they give little blurbs of dialogue (occasionally helpful, mostly just flavor text). The troublemaker from last game, named Corin, is now Papa Blox's apprentice, and runs the Training Crashmo area. It's a small world they've made here, but bringing continuity into such a small world makes it feel so much bigger. There's also neat extras to unlock, like a sound test (with personality), or a set of ten "Prototype Crashmo" with blocks that have more than one square of depth/width, creating significantly more complex shapes. I actually like the music in this game a lot more. I'm not exactly a music major, but I think it's an increased emphasis on percussion and more memorable melodies that seal the deal for this one. It's slightly less laid-back than Pushmo's soundtrack, and makes for some of the thinkiest music I've ever thunk to. Give the whole thing a listen.
Listen, I get it, the game's not for everyone. Hell, it probably wasn't for me back when it released a decade ago. But for every puzzle I skipped back then, there was another that I finished and was subsequently blown away by. It was hard as balls, but I recognized its genius. This was the one where I made the most custom stages, designing puzzles for this game's rules made me feel like a genius. Maybe the casual Nintendo 3DS userbase just wasn't ready for the genius of Crashmo, but if you like difficult puzzle games, you really ought to play this one.
I appreciate Crashmo.
Crashmo is hard.
In the earliest stages of the game, Papa Blox sits on the sidelines and will inform you if a move you've made has completely ruined your ability to finish the puzzle. Frankly, with how complex this game's puzzles are, I feel like there ought to have been an option to let you know this during any puzzle. I neglected to mention this in my review of the previous game, but by actively playing a puzzle for long enough, the pause button will flash, and the option to skip that puzzle will unlock on the pause menu. In Crashmo, you can just skip a puzzle at any time. Skipping doesn't feel completely necessary in Pushmo, but there are points in Crashmo where it'll feel damn near mandatory. That being said, the fact that it's so hard is it's biggest strength...
Finishing puzzles in Crashmo feels incredible.
Every move you make feels deliberate. You have to think several steps ahead as you make your moves. You can trial-and-error parts of a puzzle, but you really need to make sure you're not fucking yourself over in the long run. Y'see, there's a little trick that Crashmo uses in its challenge stages: Sometimes blocks are color-coded in a way that subtly tells you to move them in a certain way. By proxy, the themeing dynamic from the first game is now completely flipped; "Challenge" levels are logic puzzles, and "Mural" levels are chaotic tests of spatial awareness. There's a good reason why the game waits until puzzle 81 of 100 to bring the pixel art murals in. That's where the training wheels come off. They're also where several parts of the mural come off, seeing as gravity is now a factor, and the pixel art rarely maintains its shape after it drops in. Now you have to view the shapes and make your own judgements. Apparently, that level of abstraction is where my brain begins to melt.
Crashmo is fucking HARD.
...however, I think it accomplishes what a puzzle game should do: Make every solution satisfying.
The presentation is roughly in line with Pushmo, but there's a little bit more personality everywhere. Papa Blox's granddaughter Poppy comes to visit, and Mallo is smitten. So smitten in fact that he does a rad sumo pose and unintentionally scares off all 100 birds she rode in on. Good job idiot, now you gotta push blocks again to get the birds back. You can check on the birds you've rescued and they give little blurbs of dialogue (occasionally helpful, mostly just flavor text). The troublemaker from last game, named Corin, is now Papa Blox's apprentice, and runs the Training Crashmo area. It's a small world they've made here, but bringing continuity into such a small world makes it feel so much bigger. There's also neat extras to unlock, like a sound test (with personality), or a set of ten "Prototype Crashmo" with blocks that have more than one square of depth/width, creating significantly more complex shapes. I actually like the music in this game a lot more. I'm not exactly a music major, but I think it's an increased emphasis on percussion and more memorable melodies that seal the deal for this one. It's slightly less laid-back than Pushmo's soundtrack, and makes for some of the thinkiest music I've ever thunk to. Give the whole thing a listen.
Listen, I get it, the game's not for everyone. Hell, it probably wasn't for me back when it released a decade ago. But for every puzzle I skipped back then, there was another that I finished and was subsequently blown away by. It was hard as balls, but I recognized its genius. This was the one where I made the most custom stages, designing puzzles for this game's rules made me feel like a genius. Maybe the casual Nintendo 3DS userbase just wasn't ready for the genius of Crashmo, but if you like difficult puzzle games, you really ought to play this one.
I appreciate Crashmo.
Hooblashooga
1 year ago