Numbala

Genre: Arcade / Educational

Players: 1

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Review:

Numbala, released on Nintendo Switch in 2018, is a game that combines Arcade-style gameplay with Educational elements, with a premise that you’re flying a spaceship through various levels trying to collect numbered discs while avoiding obstacles.

The educational element involves the numbers themselves, which indicate the height at which the ship is flying, with players needing to select a number to rise or lower to that height, with the game later getting more complicated by limiting your way of directly reaching a spot, instead requiring you to solve simple math problems.

This game is already at a disadvantage in that it replaces a simple control scheme with a more convoluted one, but then it makes things even more difficult by adding a bunch of problems on top of this.

First and foremost, there are the control problems. Players cannot use simple gamepad controls, but must instead use either Joy-Con motion controls or, if in handheld mode, touchscreen controls. This is despite that the game’s controller selection menu shows a Pro-style controller, which it will not allow you to start when playing the game. Both the touchscreen controls and motion controls don’t let you control the ship directly, either – you must instead use them to manipulate a control panel, with motion controls having you move a slider left and right in addition to button presses to set your desired amount on that slider.

As if this awkward control setup isn’t bad enough, the game does a poor job differentiating the different altitude levels, forcing players to roughly guess, “is this a six or a seven?” Even just having lines like you’d see on sheet music would help you to maintain a good idea how high things are, something that’s immensely important when you need to be precise.

It’s a shame too, because the visuals here are lovely, using a colorful 2D art style that’s really appealing. This is joined by a relaxed soundtrack that sounds like something fair use. Still, it’s overall a pleasant-looking and -sounding game.

Unfortunately, I feel like the desire to push Numbala’s educational elements seems like it made its creators lose sight of the need for decent controls, resulting in a game that’s not bad in theory, but that’s just not at all fun to play.

tl;dr – Numbala is an Arcade-style game with Educational elements that has players indirectly controlling their ship’s altitude to collect numbered discs and evade obstacles. There are some interesting ideas here, but the absolutely terrible controls and lack of useful in-game indicators make this more frustrating than fun.

Grade: C

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