It's that time again for a new episode of Chichuki Views, the show where I go hands-on with upcoming games and show them off. Usually it's about an hour or so but I don't want to spoil too much of the game for you. This time we're checking out Flowstone Saga on Steam. It's a role-playing game mixed with Tetris and that sounds like an interesting idea to me.
As I mentioned prior, having a role-playing game with elements from Tetris is a a very interesting idea. I'm not the biggest Tetris fan but Flowstone Saga felt differently to me. I really liked the idea of having battles and puzzles solved with playing Tetris so lets get right into it. I really liked how you have to use your mind to figure out how to attack enemies as well as how to heal with different puzzle blocks/Flowstones. I thought it was very cool to interact with different puzzles while exploring with Mirai and have to place the pieces a certain way to get through it. During the gameplay, you can see that I had slight issues being able to tell where my Flowstone pieces were going to land in puzzles/battles. Those familiar with Tetris know that you can place pieces in certain spots by pushing down and that is true here too. There was a flame indicator to tell where pieces were going to go but I think it was sticking slightly; thus my issue with the piece placement.
You'll be able to level up by gaining experience from battles and you'll have the option to unlock perks to use in battle. These are like your abilities that role-playing games give to your character. Being able to increase damage to enemies during battle was one I really liked. Graphically, the game looks really good. I really liked the design of New Riverstone, the town where Mirai is from and the first town you come across. The images for each character you come across in locations were very well done too. I really liked the interaction between Mirai and Sihd as the writing was very well done as it felt very natural. It wasn't only battles that used puzzles like Tetris, you could harvest resources needed for building in this fashion too.
I have to say that I thought encounters would be slow, having to wait for flowstones to fall down into place, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was also very easy to switch between enemy targets during battle as well. There feels like there is a lot of custom options during gameplay as well. You can find all kinds of different weapons to use during battle, like most RPGs.
Flowstone Saga is an interesting idea for a game combining role-playing game elements with Tetris-like puzzles. Graphically, the game looks fantastic as it has that retro RPG feel to it. Flowstone Saga is a game that I'm looking forward to.
Make sure you check out the Hands-on/impressions video below.