Puzzle Herder

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

Puzzle Herder is a character-based Puzzle game released on Nintendo Switch in 2019. This game has players moving on tiles, moving animals to try to combine those that are the same kind, and then push them to a corral tile.

The presentation here is decent, but I say that with a caveat. The game’s 3D visuals look nice on the surface, with some nice detail to the levels, but I can’t help but feel like I’m looking at a bunch of slapped-together assets. These visual elements seem clunky and somewhat unpolished, with awkward animations and pieces that often don’t seem to fit together well. This is joined by annoying voice clips for your character, and backed by a New Agey soundtrack that’s actually pretty nice, but once again doesn’t really fit the rest of the game.

The gameplay here is a block-pushing style of Puzzle game that’s similar to Sokoban-style puzzles, with the catch being that you’re only allowed to move animal blocks to the goal corral tile after you have combined all of the same kind into one block. This is a decent enough spin on the formula, but it’s pretty much the only interesting thing this game has to offer, as everything else is standard Sokoban fare. What’s worse, the movement is slow and clunky, and I encountered a glitch or two as I played. This is just not a well-polished game.

I suppose players looking for a time-waster of a Puzzle game may find Puzzle Herder to be suitable in that regard, but there are so many other better Puzzle games on Nintendo Switch. Given how clunky and unpolished this game is, I recommend you go with one of those other games.

tl;dr – Puzzle Herder is a character-based Puzzle game in the Sokoban style that has you moving the same kinds of animals into groups before pushing them to an exit. It’s a premise that works, but there is otherwise nothing of interest going on here, and the game is overall clunky and unpolished. It’s not horrible, but you have countless other better choices on Nintendo Switch.

Grade: C-

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