The premise for Pushmo is deceptively simple. You control a character whose job it is to scale to the top of a block formation. This is done by pushing and pulling pieces of that formation until they form something scaleable. During the first few challenges, I had a hard time grasping why people loved this game so much. However, it doesn’t take long for that classic Nintendo brilliance to kick in.
Pushmo‘s push and pull gameplay mechanics don’t change once the game has taught you how they work, but the levels constantly do. There are hundreds of levels that will repeatedly test how well you’ve grasped those mechanics. I love how it really motivates you to think creatively about ways to manipulate them to your advantage. After the initial set of tutorial challenges, it really ramps up and trying to solve each level was a joy. Even some of the smallest and simplest designs took me a good chunk of time to solve. Oddly, Catherine is a close parallel to the Pushmo experience, albeit one with far less sexual tension.
Though it’s no substitute for straight-up DLC, the game has a cool level creator that can export your work into QR codes to share with others. Or, if you’re not all that creative, you’re one Google search away from playing a ton of cool user-designed levels by snapping a picture of the QR code off your computer screen.
The concept of Pushmo is so simple, yet so brilliant in execution. It makes the most out of the few gameplay mechanics it has and I had a blast scaling its myriad of structures, regardless of complexity. This was successful enough that Nintendo released a sequel called Crashmo, which I’ll surely tackle next.
In Third Person 