Canvaleon tells the story of a sad but special chameleon that was born to be an outcast. Born without color and without the power of camouflage, everybody ignored the poor thing, even its parents. After years of struggling our little chameleon finds a friend in Doodle, an artists who sees the chameleon as a living canvas. No longer is the little chameleon sad, Canvas is born and ready to go on an adventure!
The adventure begins
And so after this short but touching story, starts your adventure. The story was told by beautiful hand draw images; too bad the game itself isn’t as beautiful. The moment you start the actual game, you’ll be disappointed by the way it looks for sure. It isn’t bad but everything looks way too generic and outdated to be interesting. The only positive note is that the characters, both good and evil look great. The character design is created with a lot of love. All design are simple and yet adorable. This and the gorgeous hand draw intro are the reason why we’re disappointed in the way the environment looks but everything has its purpose so it seems.
Collect butterflies to blend in
This brings us to the purpose of the game. It all starts when Canvas and Doodle go to collect some butterflies in their nearby caves. Butterflies are needed as paint in the world of Canvaleon. You can collect different colors, allowing you to buy or create new camouflage for Canvas. The first level is an easy straightforward stretch to the finish, only so you can discover that aliens attacked you village. Your task is easy; defeat all the enemies in different levels in order to chase them away.
Every level follows the same rules. It is full of butterflies to collect but also filled with enemies to avoid. Unlike other popular 2D platformers, this game isn’t about speed; it’s about stealth and tactics. One hit of an enemy or object will result in instant death and forced replay of the level. Despite its cute looks, this is far from an easy game.
Sneak pass the enemy
So jumping on enemies or trying to take them down won’t work here. You need to get passed enemies without them noticing you. How? By using the right camouflage. Every level has its own color scheme so you can buy or create a camouflage that matches the environment as good as possible. If you match the environment, you can easily sneak passed enemies without them ever noticing you. But, there is a catch. Some enemies have far better eyes than others; this needs to be taken into consideration before advancing.
Some enemies won’t notice you while you’re only camouflaged for 70%, while others will notice you immediately when you try to approach them in 70% camouflage. In here you’ll find the true challenge of the game. Learning the right moves and right set of colors to successfully clear a level is hard and the game won’t explain it to you. Do you die often in a level? Try out another one since it’s possible you haven’t got the right tools to clear the job to start with.
Find your own path
The mechanic is basically the game’s strength and weakness at the same time. After you complete the first level, you’re free to pick a level you like to start. This feeling of freedom is great, you’re not forced to complete the levels in a said order, but there is an order on the other hand. Most of the levels you start in will soon prove too hard to complete. By entering other worlds and changing your camouflage, you’ll learn the right path to follow.
This exploration and try & error are a huge part of the game and will surely appeal to the more experienced gamer. Young gamers who bought the game because of its cute looks will be disappointed by this extreme difficulty for sure. So be warned, Canvaleon sure looks cute but it’s one of the hardest games we’ve played on the Wii U so far.
Create your own camouflage
This brings us to the last section worth pointing out, the creation of your own camouflage. Using the Wii U GamePad, you can easily draw any pattern you want, if you have enough colored butterflies. Creating cameos of Mario and other characters is possible but most likely not that smart to survive. It’s a fun feature and we’re glad the developers included this feature instead of just going for the old shop formula. It’s good to have both options. Less creative gamers will be able to complete the game with the camouflages found in the store.
| The good: | The bad: |
| + Creating your own camouflage | – Too hard for some |
| + Bringing stealth to 2D platformers | – Uninspired environments |
| + Great character design | – Should come with a better tutorial |
Canvaleon is a hard game to judge, by its cute looks you would expect an easy straightforward platformer but that isn’t the case. By using the camouflage and stealth mechanics, this is by far one of the harder games on the consoles. It forces the gamers to learn from their mistakes but a little more guidance would have been better. If you’re looking for a challenging game with adorable visuals, this is one to get for sure. After learning and mastering everything that the game has to offer we can really say it was an enjoyable but often frustrating ride.
