Art Style: Precipice

Genre: 3D Puzzle-Platformer

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local Wireless)

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Review:

Art Style: Precipice is a 3D Puzzle-Platformer released on the Nintendo DSi via the DSiWare service in 2009 and then grandfathered into the Nintendo 3DS eShop when that system was released. This game has players avoiding boxes as they fall and climbing up them to try to reach a higher level.

The presentation in this game is fairly minimalist. The game uses extremely basic-looking 3D visuals, with blank untextured boxes being walked on by a featureless humanoid figure with a flat-colored background. This is backed by a slightly unsettling synthesized soundtrack, along with a synthesized voice saying the game’s title on the title screen. It’s not much, but it definitely does create the sense of a somewhat otherworldly setting that’s slightly ominous, which works for a game that has players constantly scrambling to try to avoid falling blocks.

That of course brings me to the gameplay, which is first and foremost about avoiding those falling blocks, but players also need to be concerned about their constantly-draining health bar. This can be refilled by changing the color of a line or a whole “floor” of blocks by walking on them, with each block changing from white to a color to signify you’ve stepped on top of it. Additionally, some blocks will refill your health when walked upon, while others are essentially bombs that need to be defused by walking on them, else they explode and take out a 3×3 section of the blocks.

It may seem relatively simple to just defuse bomb blocks before their timer runs out and avoid falling blocks in the meantime, but players must be wary because they can only climb up one “story” of blocks at a time, and while they can push around blocks, they can’t do so if there are blocks behind or above the one they’re trying to push. Players can knock out an entire row of blocks using a pickup they get from defusing a bomb block, but of course these are limited in number. This means you must be wary about inadvertently trapping yourself, or failing to leave a path up to a bomb block before it explodes.

Mostly this makes for a pretty satisfying Puzzle-Platformer, where players need to be scrambling to be aware of where blocks are falling and where they need to be moved to. However, there is one issue that’s holding this game back – movement is still and sluggish. In particular, climbing up or down blocks seems to take an interminable amount of time. What’s more, while you can rotate the camera, you can’t do so freely – it stops at one of four isometric viewpoints.

Still, despite the control issues, Precipice is a satisfying and surprisingly compelling Puzzle-Platformer. Running around trying to keep ahead of the constantly-falling blocks makes for a fun challenge, and the game’s somewhat off-putting presentation actually seems to work in the game’s favor. For a mere $5, this game is definitely worth adding to your Nintendo 3DS collection.

tl;dr – Art Style: Precipice is a Puzzle game that has players running out of the way of falling boxes and pushing them to manage their buildup. It’s a surprisingly compelling experience with a slightly off-putting presentation that works well for the game. The only real issue here are the controls are sluggish and there’s not enough control over the camera. Even so, this is well worth the $5 price tag.

Grade: B

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