Om Nom: Coloring, Toons & Puzzle

Genre: Compilation / Art Application / Jigsaw Puzzle / Misc.

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

WARNING: THIS GAME HEAVILY PUSHES MICROTRANSACTIONS

Om Nom: Coloring, Toons & Puzzle, released in 2022 on Nintendo Switch, is a Compilation that combines multiple game modes, including a simple coloring book Art Application, a Jigsaw Puzzle, and a “connect-the-dots”-style Puzzle, along with a collection of Om Nom Stories videos, with all of this content starring Om Nom, the cute little green creature from the Cut the Rope series, which dates all the way back to 2010.

Om Nom: Coloring, Toons & Puzzle is split into four game modes: Toons, Coloring, Puzzle, and Dots. Each of these sections offers something different, but all of them are clearly designed to appeal to young kids, with a colorful, cartoony 2D art style, although there are other elements here and there too, like a 3D paintbrush in the Coloring mode, and videos that blend live action and 2D cartoon animations in the Toons mode. This is all joined by whimsical music that fits the game’s tone, but gets repetitive pretty quickly.

Each of the game modes is separated into different menus, and players can use either a standard controller or a touchscreen for everything, with good touchscreen support. Frustratingly, going into 2-player co-op mode forces players to use two Joy-Cons, even if you have Pro controllers.

Okay, so let’s go through each of the game modes here.

First, Toons is literally just a collection of the Om Nom Stories short videos, all of which can be viewed for free on YouTube. Despite this, the game only comes with season one of the videos, with the others requiring paid DLC. Needless to say, this seems pretty stingy.

Coloring lets players access a coloring book application, and this feature is both pretty good yet also lacking. Players can use premade images to color in or get a blank “whiteboard” to work on, , and there are some good-looking brush effects and a decent 77-color palette to select from. Unfortunately, aspiring artists wanting some degree of precision in their work will be disappointed, as there are no pencil, pen, or marker tools, no zoom function, no way to create lines or shapes. Aside from an “undo” button, there’s little in the way of tools or features at all here.

Puzzle is a Jigsaw Puzzle mode, which may disappoint fans of the Cut the Rope series, because those are, you know, Puzzle games. Yet despite that being where this franchise began, you won’t find those physics-based Puzzles anywhere near this game. I suppose the Jigsaw Puzzle gameplay here is mostly decent enough, though the game spoon-feeds players only a small number of pieces at a time, and those pieces are always limited to those within the same area, meaning that while this may be easier for younger players, it’s completely lacking the challenge that any older player will want.

Speaking of “lacking a challenge”, Dots mode is just a connect-the-dots game, and when you tap a dot it even tells you which dots that one connects with. So… yeah, pretty much just a game for babies.

Look, I criticize the lack of challenge here, but that doesn’t mean that I have it in for games that target youngsters. The issue is that this game skews much younger than the core series its star character comes from, and what’s more this game is loaded with calls for players to pay extra for microtransactions, something I don’t look kindly on in a game meant for kids, especially younger kids. And you can avoid paying separately for these microtransactions by getting the game’s “Complete Pack”, but even so this seems pretty cynical for a game being sold to very young players.

The sad thing is that Om Nom: Coloring, Toons & Puzzle had some good potential to be a great multifaceted activity center for kids, but at each step along the way, something feels limited or compromised. The coloring book works really well… but it lacks the tools to make it the star of the show. The jigsaw puzzle works well too, but the way the game pushes the easiest pieces to you limits the game to something only kids will ever enjoy. Connect-the-dots is only one step removed from “peek-a-boo” in the hierarchy of “games that only young kids will enjoy”. And the inclusion of the Om Nom Stories videos is nice… until you see the game withholding later videos to try to squeeze kids (but really, parents) for money to buy something they can get for free elsewhere. It’s such a cynical mess, and not one I could recommend, even if you have little kids.

tl;dr – Om Nom: Coloring, Toons & Puzzle is a game containing a coloring book Art Application, a Jigsaw Puzzle, a simple connect-the-dots game, and a collection of short videos, all featuring the Om Nom character from the Cut the Rope game franchise. Unfortunately, everything in this package skews heavily toward very young kids, which wouldn’t be so much a problem if the game wasn’t filled with some pretty gross microtransaction grabs for your wallet. The result is something that’s difficult for me to recommend, even for those wanting something for very young kids.

Grade: C-

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