I’m a big fan of Catherine. For those that don’t know it, it was a block puzzler game made by Atlus where you had to climb to the top before the bottom below would crumble. Why do I mention this? Because Pushmo is existentially a much cuter and easier Catherine. But instead of having blocks fall down or bosses chase you throughout the level you have 3 sections of blocks, a reset button, and the goal is ultimately to save people being stuck in these pushmo blocks. There is no dire need, no pressed clock, just simple yet tricky puzzles on how to get from point A to point B using the pushmo blocks given. In a lot of ways, Pushmo isn’t exciting, but where it gets its excitement is not from pressured timed levels, but by the levels being huge brain puzzlers and really testing how you think about climbing using only 3 different layers. In this regard, Pushmo is an excellent game that constantly tests your wit on climbing, but it never gets to hard that it feels impossible to do.
Pushmo also has a few more surprises in store, while Catherine has different blocks, Pushmo has different buttons. These buttons can either led you to another place within the Pushmo level , acting like shoots and ladders, or push all the blocks of a given color out to help you advance further upward. Pushmo also grants the players the ability to skip certain levels if they tried hard enough. While it may not be completely clear on how to pass a level on the first try, leaving and then coming back often lets the player get through Pushmo faster. This is because the more you play this game the more you can learn to manipulate maps and their layers so the part you were stuck on may be clearer in another level. Once a player has beaten all the levels in Pushmo you then get another extra set of Pushmos to solve for and play with. This gives players a huge amount of content and replay ability throughout Pushmo, which is good because this game can become quite addicting. Add this with a Pushmo creator, and you got a dangerously large amount of content that could keep anyone happy for quite a while. Which makes Pushmo quite a deal for its price.
Course Pushmo isn’t all that great as constantly solving each Pushmo can often get quite tedious. And adding this in with the beginning mandatory tutorials can led any given player the need to take a break from solving simple puzzles that fill like nothing more than filter. Mind that this is only at the very beginning of this game, and once you finish all the unnecessarily long explanations for pushing blocks you don’t really hear about it again. The problem is that Pushmo thinks you’re a little too dumb to know what to do the first time they explained to you a mechanic. So when you finish the mechanic they show it to you again and again and again. What’s even more madding though is a lot of this isn’t skip-able (at least efficiently so) making it very annoying to start the game at the beginning. Pushmo doesn’t have much of a story or soundtrack either, but it is very heavily based on gameplay and visuals to not depend on them.
Final Thoughts:
Think of Pushmo as a cuter, easier Catherine. It’s an addictive game of block pushing to the top to get to the goal. While Pushmo can be a bit tedious at times, especially considering the tutorial; Pushmo always manages to challenge the brain enough to make you want to solve more and more puzzles. When you add this in with creating your pictures that can be turned into puzzles to, it makes for a very addictive experience that any puzzle fan would love to have.