Stretchmo

Genre: Puzzle-Platformer / 3D Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

Stretchmo is a family-friendly Puzzle-Platformer with some mild 3D Platformer elements released on Nintendo 3DS eShop in 2015. This is the fourth and as of this writing final game in the _____mo series that began with 2011’s Pushmo, and its gameplay and premise is mostly pretty similar. In this game, players once again take the role of Mallo, a guy charged with getting to the top of a structure of blocks to rescue a trapped child. To do so, players must push and pull the blocks in the structure to create a path they can use to get to the top. However, in Stretchmo, players can now stretch out the blocks left, right, and behind the original flat image, in addition to pulling it straight out.

Nominally, this game was released as Free-to-Play, though this is misleading – the only free portion of the game is the tutorial, essentially acting as a demo for the full game. Players then have the option of paying for level packs to experience the full game, either by buying these packs individually for amounts totalling $14, or as a bundle for $10. On the one hand, this approach gives players a “try before you buy” option, and allows them to pick and choose which level packs they want. However, I can’t help but feel like this method of buying the game is overly-complicated. I suppose at the very least, with a full total of 250 levels, the amount of content here justifies the slightly-higher price tag over the original game’s $7.

When it comes to the presentation, as in the other games in the series, Stretchmo uses simple, colorful 3D visuals that are appealing but nothing impressive, backed by a lighthearted soundtrack that does a good job of fitting the game’s tone. Overall, this game does enough to present a friendly exterior, placing a large part of the focus on the puzzles themselves.

For the gameplay, adding the block-stretching makes this game a little more complicated than Pushmo was, and although it’s still very accessible, I would argue that this game is slightly less approachable than its predecessor was. It’s still an excellent Puzzle game with some clever design, it just isn’t quite on par with the first game. At the very least I credit it for adding a few new gameplay features on top of the stretching, such as enemies that appear in some levels and must be avoided or exploited to reach the goal.

And finally, once again, Stretchmo offers players a custom Puzzle creator where they can create their own puzzles as well. And while this game doesn’t include any direct mechanism to send these puzzles to other Nintendo 3DS systems, players can have the game create QR codes which can be used to send these puzzles to others, or even post online.

With all of this being the case, Stretchmo is still an excellent Puzzle-Platformer that hits many of the same great notes as prior games in the series, but not everyone is going to appreciate this game’s new monetization model, and the changes to the gameplay make this sequel somewhat less approachable than the previous games. It’s still an excellent must-have game for Puzzle fans on Nintendo 3DS, but it’s not quite as excellent as Pushmo was.

tl;dr – Stretchmo is a family-friendly Puzzle Platformer with light 3D Platformer elements that has players pushing, pulling, and stretching out blocks to climb a structure. An unusual monetization model and more complex gameplay make this somewhat harder to get into than prior games in the series, but it’s still an excellent game for Puzzle fans, and one they’ll want to snatch up quickly before the eShop closes in March 2023.

Grade: A-

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