Recently, I was able to give the puzzle-adventure game, TumbleSeed from aeiowu a test run to see what makes the game tick. You play the role of TS(TumbleSeed) as you traverse up the mountain, trying to get to the peak and bring peace back to said mountain. Do you have what it takes to get to the top?
There are three modes in the game, Adventure mode, the Daily Challenge, and Tutorial mode. I would start out with the Tutorial mode so you can get your feet wet and learn the basics of the game. Tutorial isn’t thrown at you so if you would rather learn “trial by fire” then jump right into the Adventure mode. You get the basics of the controls, which are pretty simple, but are a hassle. The game is controlled by dual control sticks on the PlayStation 4 controller.
I don’t think you’ll get the full enjoyment of the game without understanding the basics of the controls so I would recommend playing Tutorial first. Adventure Mode is the main gameplay mode and where you make your climb up the mountain. You will need to avoid holes and monsters/enemies along the way to survive but you won’t have to do this alone. You’ll have all kinds of power-ups at your disposal to achieve your goal.
However, you don’t have an unlimited supply of power for these power-ups. You will need to collect crystals along the way to power yourself up, similar to storing energy for attacks. During the adventure, you will find caves/caverns to find new powers to add to your seed arsenal but you never know what you’ll find until you go down into the cave. The mountain is different every time you play the trial and error factor is there but in sprit only. What I mean by that is, you can practice playing over and over again but the same situation/problem you have one play through might never come up again. (Trial and error) As you progress up the mountain, you’ll run into a “town”(that’s probably the best name for it) that you can trade powers for new power-ups as well as obtain certain abilities.
There are also stores in the town that you can buy power-ups from as well so stock up for your journey! Crystals are the major form of currency in TumbleSeed and you can never have too many. There are some power-ups that allow you to get more and all the power-ups need crystals to use their powers. You spend crystals in towns as well so make sure you grab the ones lying around too. There are challenges that you can complete during your adventure that will add to your gameplay that can range from getting to the first town to having five thorns on your seed during play. These challenges are just another added gameplay element that will eliminate repetitive feelings from the game. The Daily Challenge mode will allow everyone to compete on the same mountain with the same seed so it’s really anyone’s game!
Now with every game, there are good things as well as bad things. TumbleSeed is no different. The controls didn’t really do it for me. The dual control sticks are an interesting mechanic but for in my opinion don’t work for a game based around precision controls and timing. The controls need to be really extremely tight for a game based around timing and I don’t think TumbleSeed has that.
There were times where you thought you were going to make it though and then all of a sudden something crazy happened like a spider jumped on you when you had five thorns or falling in a hole and losing all your remaining health because you didn’t use your Flagseed power-up recently enough. It’s things like that that get on the nerves of players and aggravate them to no end. Finally, I didn’t like that there wasn’t a checkpoint when you got to one of the cities between mountain terrains as well as losing your new power-up you would get in the cave during adventure mode after death. A trade off could have been instead of trading in two-for-one at the first town for a brand new power-up, you could have traded two for any one power-up you already had. That could have brought new possibilities to Tumbleseed.
It’s these reasons that I’m giving TumbleSeed for the PlayStation 4 an 8/10. I would like to thank aeiowu for the review code.