Tempopo

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

Tempopo is a family-friendly Puzzle game released in 2025 on PC, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. Set in a fantasy world in the clouds where a young girl named Hana befriends an island of sentient flowers, Hana mistakenly causes a storm that blows them all away and must use direct the few that remain to help her gather up her lost friends.

Tempopo is the perfect example of how you elevate a game through its presentation with an eye towards unified artistic design. While this isn’t a Music-Rhythm game, everything in Tempopo is musically-driven, with Hana and her friends all acting in time with the beat, giving everything a bouncy feel that really makes this game feel like something special. The 3D visuals here are mostly pretty good with some decent details and bright colors, but the outstanding animation (especially for Hana herself) really takes things to the next level here.

Of course, if a game is going to be driven by its music, it should hopefully have good music, and Tempopo is no slouch in that regard. The game’s levels have a faint, distant melody that’s little more than atmospheric while you’re working on piecing together its puzzles, like the lovely Sunset Jammin’ – Think – Instrumental, and What Do – Think, but once you set things in motion to test out your puzzle, the melody springs to life, often with a bouncy beat that’s delightfully catchy, like How Do Ya Do – Action and What Do – Action. And once you complete a series of levels, you’re treated to a brief vocal theme for that level, like The Chill of Snow. All of this is joined by some decent voice acting for Hana in occasional cutscenes.

The gameplay here is good too, a bit like a combination of a 3D sokoban-style puzzle and Lemmings. Players need to ensure that each level’s walking pink flower bud things, the titular tempopo, get to all of that level’s flowers and bring them to that level’s exit. However, players don’t control these tempopo directly, and must instead place in each level commands and temporary upgrades to instruct them where to go or empower them to get past obstacles. Some will turn their tempopo into a block that blocks harmful enemies and allows other tempopo to walk on top of them, some will have them kick an obstructing block or a fellow tempopo needing a boost over a gap, and some will simply have them change direction. it’s up to you to place these wisely to complete each level.

The game offers two difficulty levels – an easier difficulty for younger players shows where everything needs to be placed but doesn’t tell them what goes where, while a standard difficulty only occasionally give hints at where pieces should be placed and mostly lets the player figure things out. I do wish this game have players a bit more freedom to tackle each level as they please though – there’s generally only one solution for each level.

Because of this, I think Tempopo is a marvelous Puzzle game, and absolutely worth picking up, but I wouldn’t quite place it among my top tier of Puzzle games, ones I’m sure to come back to time and again. This is a wonderful Puzzle game with an outstanding presentation, it’s just not quite as compelling as my favorites in the genre. But definitely don’t let that dissuade you from giving it a try.

tl;dr – Tempopo is a family-friendly Puzzle game that has you placing commands for the titular walking flower creatures, the tempopo, to follow, with the goal of getting them to bring every flower in each of the game’s levels to that level’s exit. It’s a solid Puzzle game, though a bit limited because it doesn’t give players the freedom to find their own solutions. However, the outstanding presentation with beautiful animation and wonderful music really help to elevate this and make it a solid Puzzle game that’s well worth trying out.

Grade: B

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