Trouserheart

Genre: Top-Down Action

Players: 1

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Review:

Trouserheart is a simple, family-friendly Top-Down Action game where players take on the role of a king who embarks on an epic quest to retrieve his stolen trousers. As that description implies, this game is whimsical in its approach to the fantasy genre, with a cartoony presentation and locales named after… well, trousers.

This game’s presentation is one of its strongest points. While the game’s graphics are at best decent, the game is absolutely overflowing with a unique style that makes everything colorful and cartoony in a way that’s really appealing, and perfectly fits the game’s kid-friendly vibe. The sound reflects this as well, with good music, and amusing noises as your boxer short-wearing king grunts satisfactorily when nabbing health or thwacking enemies with his sword.

The gameplay here is good for what it is, with satisfying swiping at enemies to subdue them, and a good variety of enemies and environments, with a simple but sufficient upgrade system. However, when I say “good for what it is”, what it is is extremely repetitive.

With the exception of the pause button (oddly, mapped to X), virtually every other button on the controller does the same thing – a simple, quick attack, which can be held down to keep attacking. As you might imagine, this doesn’t leave much room for nuance in the combat. Also frustrating is your character’s movement speed, which is ponderously slow. And some of the enemies have broken hit detection that allows their hits to strike you when facing the wrong direction from a distance away… which would have been more annoying if this game wasn’t overly easy, with enemies gushing out health pickups on a frequent basis, even in boss battles.

With its numerous flaws, it’s hard to give Trouserheart an enthusiastic recommendation, which is a shame because it is fun, has a great presentation, and is the right challenge level and simplicity to make it perfect for youngsters. Unfortunately, it’s also extremely simple and repetitive, with some frustrating design flaws. If you have a small kid looking for a fun time-waster, this is likely to delight them, but more grown-up players will want something deeper and better-designed.

tl;dr – Trouserheart is a family-friendly Top-Down Action game about a king fighting his way through hordes of enemies to retrieve his stolen trousers. The presentation here is fantastic, and the game has a simplicity and low challenge level ideal for youngsters. Unfortunately though, more seasoned gamers will be turned off by how repetitive it is, along with multiple frustrating design issues.

Grade: C+

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