![]() New relics that provide perks - more gems, bigger explosions - and new weapons - freeze your foes! Do more damage with each hit! Slow time! - that generally mix things up and then disappear once you've used them a certain number of times. Maybe a boss, which can feel like Auto Chess, or even just chess, you know. Get through that and you're onto the next area. Open three chests - you'll need three keys - as you move around the grid, and then you can get the exit portal. The more baddies you do in, the more chances that chests will fall from above. Will you be able to rejoin the action before it's filled up and ended the game? Will you be able to rejoin the action and recapture all the loot you lost before you died? Pocket Dungeon is really great fan-service, with characters, locations, enemies and even music from the original getting a bit of a reimagining. Die, and it takes an agonising time for your spirit to leave the screen - all the while the screen is filling up. Move tactically, so you can reach a health potion to chug so you don't do yourself in halfway through the next encounter. Finish them all off to make more room on the grid, because there's always a torrent coming from above. Some are invulnerable to attack unless you hit something else first. ![]() Snakes that take up a load of space as they descend. Simple ones who do quite a bit of damage. Super clever! Enemies change as you move through the game. It feels like violence, and a countdown combo system encourages you to lean into this violence with energy and speed. But there is a blood-pumping element to it. Smack an enemy who is located next to similar enemy types and eventually they all go at once - a matching chain right out of a dozen other puzzle games, sure. You smack the baddies and watch the dance of your health meter and theirs, your attack stats and theirs. Time moves like a Roguelike, with enemies falling into the grid in clockwork beats, although you can move a little faster if you like. So you play by moving about like a hero in a platforming game and attacking the falling pieces around you. But the more I play, the more this switching up of genres makes sense.īecause stuck in the middle of this falling block puzzle game is someone who does not necessarily realise they're in a falling-block puzzle game. I love the fact that Puzzle Dungeon - Pocket Dungeon! - is not a platformer at all. I love that this is the sequel - of sorts - to Shovel Knight, a fondly regarded 2D platformer in the spirit of the original Capcom Duck Tales games. Watch on YouTube Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon trailer. You could say, I guess, that "everything fell into place." ![]() It took me a little while to get in gear with it, but then suddenly everything made sense and I was in love. I should probably say right now that Puzzle Knight - Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon - is an awful lot of fun. ![]() And if you don't work quickly yet thoughtfully they will pile up above you! They will block you in! You will be left writhing, stuck between blocks and a hard place, as the screen fills and fills and you feel the weight pressing down. And they're not all blocks! Most of them are monsters. Why? Because it's a falling block puzzler in which you're inside the grid! You're moving around as the blocks stream in from above. But anyway: if you find falling block puzzlers a little claustrophobic, Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon, a game I absolutely cannot remember the name of when discussing it with others, is going to do a serious number on you. Availability: Out now on PC, PlayStation and Switch.Tetris panic, the screen filled up and the music racing: isn't that fear you feel at this moment a little too primal to be the result of a simple game you're about to lose? Isn't there some kind of deeper sinking feeling as you mess up a round of Lumines and there's simply no space for anything else to fit on the grid? Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon review A microsurgical blending of genres results in a lovely balance of precision and chaos.įalling block puzzlers are the colourful, sugary, family-friendly games that often model what it's like to be buried alive. ![]()
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