Huh, this game has so many cool ideas...and they're just sort of thrown in there. The game still looks interesting - strong art direction with polygonal but stylized art...mostly black and white with elements of color to denote either danger (red) or for moments of character-specific gameplay (purple for the rabbit, green for the caterpillar, blue for the Cheshire cat, and orange for the mad hatter whom I have yet to find/unlock).
You play as a character - any of the above, you switch freely between them whenever you want, and there's Alice - who may not actually be Alice from the books, but the characters sure do hope she is because there's all kinds of trouble un the Underworld. The Queen is breaking everything up into puzzle pieces and it's a disaster for all. Alice is the companion you must protect, she follows you around and you sometimes have to help her climb up or jump over large gaps. The game operates almost entirely via the touch screen and, a few niggles here and there, works pretty well. It's basically puzzle-solving with moments of touch-screen based combat (my least favorite part so far).
Cool things include:
a. The game levels are puzzle pieces you navigate between via doors (with card suits on them). Some of the puzzles involve going to the overworld map and rearranging the puzzle pieces so two areas become connected and you can travel between them!
b. There's chests you can find in the levels with goodies and collectibles and such. I found one that had lots of colors...weird. And then the rear DS camera turned on and I had to find stuff in the environment that matched the color! I was only able to do this by bringing up my ipad and "searching" for the color and pointing the camera at it...which perhaps goes to show that my current environment (at the time) was chromatically bland more than anything.
c. For some of the puzzles you have to blow into the microphone. They make sense in the context of the game (blowing playing cards that serve as a sail on a teacup, or blowing enemies who are cards that you've beat the armor off...etc). It's a little bit gimicky to be fair, but still - just a reminder of how much cool stuff was in the DS and how many games did make use of it.
d. The whole game is connected to some Disney "metaverse" you can presumably (I doubt it still works) connect to - through out the game I've unlocked costumes/avatars/things? for this Disney-verse. Just a reminder that this metaverse really does go far back....
e. I don't have the box with me to check - but I think the game is "Tim Burton"-related? Which is weird because AFAIK there is no Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland...but perhaps there was? Or there were plans that didn't go anywhere?
I've made it to chapter 2 - but I'm probably near the end. I need to find the Mad Hatter for some reason...but the game might be much longer than I think? I have many of the map pieces, but the game is metroid-vania like in that characters have abilities that allow access to different parts of the world...we'll see how long I play, and how many more surprises there are.
I wonder what the story behind this game is - I've assumed that Professor Heinz Wolff is a real person and that they somehow got roped into endorsing a videogame? Sort of like the Japanese guy (Kawashima?) who endorsed those brain training games that were such a hit when the DS first game out. I'm also going to guess that this professor is german - just from the name...which would make the whole thing even more odd? Or unusual? Or, maybe the professor doesn't exist and they just made up the character!
Anyways, it's fun to speculate here - and I guess a few minutes searching would find an answer BUT, it's still perhaps a bit of a sign of interesting times? (the DS years I 'm thinking here)
So, the game is basically a physics-based puzzle game where you need to touch a "bell" and there's empty space and you get items to place and a ball (or a little wagon) will spawn at a location - and then you need to Rube Goldberg-device your way there.
At first I thought it was SUPER hard - I had trouble clearing the first few levels because manipulating the pieces you get was really hard (you get certain pieces per level) and then I realized that the trigger buttons do a nice crisp 90 rotation of the pieces and it got a lot easier...
Interestingly there's a few puzzles I was able to clear with fewer pieces - which is always a nice thing since my expectation at least is that puzzle games like this (I'm also thinking Super Crayon Physics Deluxe) shine when there's a certain amount of open-ness and flexibility that allows for creative solutions and surprise.
The game comes with 100 puzzles - I did about 20 of them, it's not too long, but there are also some minigames and a sandbox mode. Strangely, the sandbox mode is locked (perhaps you need to finish the 100 puzzles?)...and the three mini games weren't that interesting.
This was a gift for my birthday and I've really been enjoying it. It's hard though - and it's taken me a bit of time to figure out what things are important/valuable and which ones less so. I guess that's a tricky thing with a game that is very familiar in its core gameplay and mechanics. You bring strategies/knowledge from an earlier game and then realize that, oh, it's not quite the same in this one.
The game is both a rogue-like deckbuilder and a (simple) tactical game - everything runs on turn-counter based timer system. Every time you play a card (or ring the bell to get a new hand of cards, unless the bell's charged - because it's also on a timer): the turn counter triggers. For all characters on the field, it counts down by one, and they all act on the "1". There's some exceptions to this (snow condition that freezes the regular turn counter), but it's a neat system because you want to get characters out there asap, some characters are better than others, but they also (the better ones) have longer turn counters - so they act fewer times! Enemies are on the same system as well. So, that system is neat and it took me a while to start to pay REAL attention to the situation (characters are arranged in two rows, like in Warsaw, but you can freely move them around - which is often necessary because if your main character dies, it's a game over)
So, here's some things I've had to learn:
(a) you can get more characters (after a battle, you choose a path on a map - sort of like Slay the Spire), but they're also cards. So, the crown upgrade is amazing - because they start on the field, so you save a turn, which is great. (it means they can start counting down to act sooner)
(b) There are charms, that you can add to cards that add abilities, initially I was dismissive of them - but now I realize their value in that they don't add cards to your deck! Bad thing is that they're random - when you get new cards you often choose 1 from 3 options. Here you get whatever - and there are definitely some that are better than others.
(c) It's hard to trash cards. I actually had to unlock the location on the map for trashing cards, and you never know if/when it'll come up. So, generally, you want to gain few cards, prioritize characters and spend coins for a crown if you can so they come out at the beginning.
(d) If you have a tight/small deck, you can effectively heal your characters by withdrawing them from the board, they go back in the deck and, presumably you can draw them the next turn (again, if your deck is small!) It's an interesting tactic - and I've had to use it a few times. If you characters get knocked out - they show up as injured (weakened significantly) for your next battle, so that really sucks.
So far the furthest I've gotten is dying on the 3rd boss! It was a surprisingly good run and I felt quite lucky. I don't know how many bosses there are - perhaps I was about to win? I've gotten to a point where I can, with a bit of regularity beat the first boss...but it's still a really hard game.
It's not a fighting game in on a 2D plane-sense, it's more like a 3D arena fighting game, but one where the characters are pretty big on the screen. Weirdly my closes reference is something like Powerstone (Dreamcast - how come that game hasn't been re-made?). You're not necessarily locked to your opponent (in the camera sense) since there are lots of different modes including 2v2 and a 4-character last mech standing mode.
My first impressions weren't overly...uh..favorable. But, as I played more, and more, and then some more, it started to grow on me. Not enough to gring my way up the ladder of leagues and things, but enough that I unlocked 8 mechs and made it from F-league in all events to C or D league in most events.
The more I played the more I appreciated the differences between the mechs I was unlocking, how to use them when fighting others, and so on. I even started to learn/understand the controls! The game uses all 4 trigger buttons, with some combos, and the face ones, and so I was sure I'd not get anywhere and would give up in shame. But no, the controls are accessible enough that I was able to get the right combo/special attacks to trigger when I wanted and so on.
I guess the game did poorly because I was not able to play against any human opponents (the game tried, but then quickly reverted my opponents to being AI) which might have resulted in a better experience for me (given how poorly I generally play these kinds of games)?
So. Here's some notes:
a. Most of the games arenas have some special features - moving parts of the world, areas rendered inaccessible, etc. Some were fun to play with because you could use the environment in tactical ways. The variety was nice.
b. Most arenas had places where weapons would spawn that you could then pick up and use. They were mostly "standard" (no super wacky stuff) but, what I thought was interesting was that you could also throw the weapons - they'd explode doing damage! So, it's a way to also deny your opponents weapons. Weirdly I don't think I ever saw an AI opponent pick up a weapon...perhaps because I never got to higher difficulty leagues?
c. Progress in the game's "campaign" is by playin LOTS of matches. Too many for my taste - but perhaps that's just me. Each time you open the game you have 4 (I think) choices of an event to choose from. Win the event and you make progress (behind the scenes, I didn't see a UI element showing how much progress I was making). What's interesting is that your preferred event style might not be amongst the options presented! Each event type is associated with a different rating (F being lowest and presumably S or A being the highest) and, I think you want to generally make progress on all of them kind of equally in order to get promoted in the meta-broader sense. These meta-promotions, also invisible/unknown just sort of happen - when an NPC character (who's sort of your manager/promoter) basically says "hey, you're now in X" and new types of events unlock. It's an interesting system and it feels much more like a "real campaign" (you're responding to opportunities available to you) except that there's no progression on a calendar or anything like that.
d. Perhaps it's due to the (presumed) lower difficulty level from being on the lower league ratings - but there were plenty of matches I felt I was "cheesing" by essentially spamming the same moves over and over.
e. Each mech has a special ultimate move. Weirdly you build it up by standing inside a circular area that spawns every now and then during a match. It's a good way to get everyone to "converge" inside the area (to build up your super meter) - BUT the super moves were pretty lame in how much damage they dealt. Looked good, just weren't very effective. The charging on the map felt new to me though...
f. The only(?) way of unlocking new mechs (there are lots! perhaps new ones appear later in the game?) is by saving up cash-points (forget the name) which you get from winning matches. BUT you can get bonus cash points by meeting match-specific goals (e.g. knock an opponent down 10 times) and by signing up for sponsor goals (e.g. knock an opponent down 100 times). They're mostly the same type of goal - but the sponsor ones are time-limited (do this in the next 30 minutes) which I felt was a bit annoying (not quite a dark pattern because they're optional). But, I thought the general concept was interesting in a "games as a service" way but in a game that is NOT a game-as-a-service.
