Puddle

It is not very often that Xbox Live Arcade gets a platformer where you don’t have direct control over your character. In Puddle instead of controlling the liquid on screen you control the angle of the screen itself. Use gravity and momentum to traverse the levels you have to preserve enough liquids until the end. This lack of direct control takes quite a bit of getting used to. Even the first couple levels of the game I failed a few times until I finally started getting the hang of things. However, I never really got completely use to playing like this. The controls are easy enough; the triggers tilt the screen and that all you can do. This play style works ok on some levels but as this is a platformer there are times when you need to make fairly precise timed jumps and since you have to reply on gravity it can be quite difficult. I played a lot of the time with my 5 year old watching and he got a kick out of seeing the count of my attempts going up each time I failed.

While the game is fairly difficult there are a couple things that have been put in place to help gamers out. First, you have to skips you can use at any point in the game if you get stuck. Once you use both of them though you’ll have to go back and beat one of those levels if you want to use a skip for a later level. Second, the levels with the more difficult jumps and timing puzzles tend to be shorter overall. So, you don’t have a long level that ends with a really hard jump. While I do appreciate that, in a lot of levels I felt like the level of fluid needed to complete could have been lowered and still not been overly easy. On the time based levels at least I found I generally had plenty of time to complete everything.

The “story” of the game actually was pretty fun. There is no dialog, but each level’s finish leads into the start of the next one. Between level sections the fluid you are using gets transformed to what is needed for the next levels. You start with water and as you finish the first sections it gets turned into fertilizer which ties into environmental based challenges in the second section. This goes on as the fluid turns into nitroglycerin, back into water, etc. This process allows for diffing mechanics to be added while keeping in one continuous story. I appreciated that continuity because the developers could easily have just had a list of levels for you to complete, but instead took the time to polish the way everything works together.

The one thing I don’t get is why this is on Xbox Live Arcade and not Android/iOS. The controls would work perfectly on a tablet. Still, if you like platformers but want something a little different Puddle is worth checking out. However, be prepared to try levels over and over as you fight with mastering the gravity and inertia based movement.