PEGBRJE: Puzzle Puppers and Last Word
Adorable puppies, and a battle of really wordy wordplay
Puzzle Puppers is an adorable puzzle solving game made by Cardboard Keep, an Australian indie team. Players are in charge of ensuring that these small doggies are fed, but they house a secret; they are extendo-dogs, extendogs if you will. They can stretch as far as they need to in order to eat, so it is up to the players to ensure that they all can reach their dish no matter what.
Puzzle Puppers is a reflavour of the line puzzle, seen a few times before in the bundle and frequents many mini games of ‘larger’ titles. As the name suggests, players will be given a doggie and a bowl, with the explicit goal of reaching it by making the dog long. There are pieces of ham scattered throughout the level as well to encourage different solutions that aren’t just ‘drag dog to end’. It’s the introduction of the second dog that is when it begins to become mind bending, as dogs cannot cross each other — unfortunately their extendo powers only work horizontally, so no hopping stretchy dogs this time. Add in holes that dogs can use, water streams and multiple bowls to create a balance of visual puzzle solving and memorization of holes and bowls to create some truly hilarious solutions to succeed.
It’s the casual relaxation of cute things that draws anyone and everyone in to play Puzzle Puppers. The puzzle complexity increases slowly, adding new dogs or new mechanics as one continues forward, but I never felt super frustrated. Instead, the lovely ambience and adorable imagery kept things calming as I dragged the dogs to their destination to make their little tails wag in happiness. Retries are infinite, as every dog can be ‘rewound’ back to their original length, or only backed up halfway to try a different solution. I don’t have much else to bring up about Puzzle Puppers other than if you like puzzles and cute dogs, this is definitely a game to grab. I’d also recommend it to anyone that may have younger siblings, kids, relatives or friends that are wanting a video game that encourages problem solving with an easily accessible aesthetic, as who doesn’t love cute dogs.
Apparently it’s got a demo on Switch and a free version on iOS and Android, so you can get your fill of extendogs everywhere and anywhere.
Last Word is a bizarre RPG of words by Merlandese, a solo indie dev based out of Sao Paolo. Players follow the life of Photographer Whitty Gawship who has been invited to a fancy evening party of the eccentric Professor Chet Chatters, who has gathered fellow rich folks and linguists to reveal a new invention. Each member of this party knows of the powers of language and debate, and it is up to Whitty Gawship to ensure that they are not take advantage of in conversation.
To put simply, Last Word is an RPG combat based completely around the art of the conversation. In this world, the ‘last word’ means everything; those who do gain a subtle power advantage over the other, being able to convince them to do whatever they say. It’s up to players to ensure that Whitty doesn’t lose in verbal combat, utilizing every tool they can come up with to ensure victory. To do so, players must move the indicator to the opponent’s ‘goal’ on their side, indicating a victory for the opponent. To do so, players are locked in a JRPG combat style with three methods of attack that utilize two energy meters; Power and Tact. Power is the conversational strength the player has and is gained via ‘Disruptive’ phrases, while Tact is gained by ‘Submissive’ phrases that consume Power. Tact is then consumed by ‘Aggressive’ phrases, which deal bonus verbal damage to the opponent depending on how composed they are. Composure is determined by a weapon-triangle of sorts, where all phrases have attacks for each of the three shapes; when attacking with a circle for example, if the enemy attacks back with a square it adds a peg it negatively effects composure and increases it by 1.
If this sounds like a lot, rest assured as I did as well. However, after the initial battle and a mild tutorial it picks up extremely quickly and the difficulty transitions from understanding the metres to utilizing them to their fullest. Last Word also does a fantastic job in the UI department, displaying all of the information on screen during combat in a clean and impactful way to inform players of what their decision effects. For example, dealing composure ‘damage’ will have a music note appear on the composure bar, and a peg will appear and change the word to reflect the enemy’s composure such as Collected, Irritated, and Over The Edge. Attacks also contain all of the information as well, so if an attack generates Power it will state how much and if it has any ‘side effects’ such as moving Whitty’s peg towards the goal.
This only scratches the surface of Last Word, as much of the game isn’t even spent within the combat. Instead, players will be interacting with the guests to gain gossip, which is a combat system unto itself. Players are looking for information, but need ‘keys’ of knowledge to lead conversations in certain ways to gain more and need to gossip with others to gain these keys. These keys can also be upgraded to further lead conversations, so conversations with individuals that don’t devolve into word battles is extremely important to the plot and gameplay. Thankfully, the characters are all written in a delightfully over the top manner, owning the ridiculousness of the situation they are in and the world where having the last word somehow grants power. They all have their own involvement with one another, such as the infinite word battles between Mr. McCall and Judge Boasting, and keep their antics up even as the night drags on thanks to plot shenanigans.
I wasn’t expecting Last Word to grab me as much as it did, especially not as an ‘unconventional JRPG’ as it self-describes. Yet the combination of goofy interesting characters with a robust and unique combat system grabbed me within minutes of starting, and refused to let me do other things for a few hours. I wanted to know more about the gossip going on with these rich folks, and how their world of oral debate somehow functioned with all of these bizarre innerworkings. For those of you that are looking for a narrative RPG that hits the feeling of ‘weird enough to keep itself super interesting’, this is definitely a narrative adventure to dig into. They are as pretentiously wordy as you would expect, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
