Welcome to our review of Puzzle herder, a herding themed puzzle game out now on Nintendo Switch!
Challenge your wits and help Dora get her animals back to her farm!
Oh, no! The animals on Dora’s farm have escaped and wandered off into the wilderness. Help her get all of the cute little critters back safely in this challenging puzzle game!
Journey across 40 levels as you put your wits to the test against these handcrafted scenarios and work out the intricacies of the puzzles in your attempt to group and drive towards the goal the seven types of animals that Dora has on her farm.
Beautiful scenery and charming music will accompany you on this colorful adventure that is bound to keep your mind alert and your puzzle solving skills on edge.
Puzzle Herder comes with two sides to the story. There is a horrible game play mechanic in play and at the same time, really smart puzzles on the other side. My job in this review is to pit both sides against each other and see which reigns supreme and if you need to buy it or not!
Puzzle Herder is horrible in gameplay, it plays so clunkily and it gives the absolute idea that this should not even exist. The herder girl moves sluggishly and overall is ugly animated, if you can even say she is animated at all. It is a basic boxxle game after all, with the herding into the animal gathering point as the end result that is required to move to the next level.
The game also introduces obstacles that can fall into the water, which is a good thing as they open up roads to finish the level. At the same time, you can accidentally push an animal into the water, ruining the level. The biggest downside to the game, you can restart a level but I found no way to just undo a simple mistake. I may have overlooked it, but I doubt it is present at all.
While I usually start with the positive in my reviews, this is the other way round. I am ending with the good. This is just a damn fine puzzle game. Like aforementioned, this is semi-inspired by games like Boxxle, … so you know it is based upon a good puzzle mechanic!
Now, a great puzzle game versus sluggish controls. I have always stated that graphics do not make a game fun, but the way it is presented. Now Puzzle Herder is horribly presented and I regret to say that its great puzzles did not manage to prevent a negative feeling overall for this game. I simply adore the idea behind the game, but I often felt like this game could have been made in 1999.
In conclusion, a bit against my will, but I am failing this game. Barely failing it, but still failing it. The clunky feeling was not properly saved by the great and smart puzzles to make me recommend it!
