Developed/Published by: Intelligent Systems / Nintendo
Released: December 8th, 2011
Completed: 14th June, 2015
Completion: Finished all the puzzles.
Trophies / Achievements: n/a

I started playing this ages and ages ago, got about half-way through, got bored and stopped, and only recently, with the release of that new Pushmo free-to-play thing (Stretchmo?) did I think “god, I should finish this so I can remove it from the front page of my 3DS.”

And so I did! To be honest I’m less “finish this immediately” about puzzle-me-dos compared to most other games, generally because, unlike a lot of games, you usually don’t forget how to play it/forget what’s going on in the story/lose the “skill” you’ve built up by playing it if you don’t play it for ages. So, for example, I’ve got a copy of Mario’s Picross on my 3DS that I probably won’t polish off until about 2023 (I thought I’d finished it, but then a whole new chunk of levels unlocked.)

Anyway, Pushmo. Pushmo has the most adorbs hero—Mallo, who is a wee sumo guy with a emoticon cat face—and you basically use this wee cutie to pull and push blocks so you can get to the top of a structure. It’s a fairly elegant puzzle game; you’re generally dealing with concepts like needing a block above you pulled out further than the block beneath it, so you need to pull another block out, or do some “side-pulls” or take a trip around the structure to come at it from a different angle. It’s all pretty clear and at that level that once you’ve got the basics down, it’s a pleasant mental workout to see how you’re going to do a structure. Occasionally, though, they play a sneaky trick where you have to use Mallo’s platforming ability to do something, which can throw you off (leaping to a block that’s far away, or, the worst, edging out and jumping around a block.) Not a fan of that.

But it’s good! Pushmo got a lot of criticism when it came out for being really, really slow to get going, but for whatever reason that didn’t bother me. What did bother me—and it’s probably what other people were really complaining about—is that the majority of the levels are just… blocks. It’s not super interesting to look at, and whenever you get to one of the chunks of levels that are art—you know, you’re climbing a flower, or a goomba, or something—it’s a sad wee thrill. And when you unlock the next chunk and it’s just blocks, it’s crushing.

Of course, the reason for that is that the levels that use art aren’t as tightly designed—there’s a lot of blocks you don’t end up using, so it’s not as “pure.” So there’s a friction in the design there, as where I (the player) want something fun to look at (even though, really, it adds nothing) but if I was always given that, I probably wouldn’t be picking up the fundamentals as well as I should (and there’s always new puzzlely tricks in Pushmo, right up until the end).

In the end I couldn’t shake the feeling that Pushmo was a bit dull, though, because of all those boring if successful pure levels. Hmm.

Will I ever play it again? No, and ultimately I’m not that interested in any of the sequels.

Final Thought: Mallo is popular enough that there are plushes of him, and oh god, squee town right there. Maybe if I’m lucky they’ll put him in a game I like more. Or maybe they’ll put him in Smash…