I just noticed the game's subtitle...and I guess it's thematically appropriate? I mean, this is a game that's sort of about saving the coral but not in any meaningful way. It's a match-3 type game, but...with a twist.
The game is upside down from what I'm normally used to. And it's like puzzle bobble/snood in that the field fills up over time and your job is to keep things under control. If things get too full (here if elements get to low on the screen - deeper underwater), then you lose. What's unusual is that in most of these games you're at the bottom firing stuff to the items that are dropping...in this game you're at the TOP and you get to place a new item wherever you want along the top row. If the space is not empty, then whatever is there gets shifted down (and might also go diagonal a bit). It makes sense because you're a boat, so you're sort of dropping these things on the surface, and that makes everything underneath that sink lower..and adjust. Things disappear when you match of course and the matches must be in a straight line (diagonal or horizontal, you can't have a vertical line because the grid is basically hex-based).
There are different colored elements (they kind of look like sea urchins? Some with spikes and others without) and you're supposed to clear a certain amount (get to a 100% completion) to clear the stage and move on to the next one. This wasn't that interesting... THere are also at least four items you can use to make things easier - like bombs that explode, color balls that make all the elements of a color disappear, and the like. The strangest are the anchors you use to take out these snails that slink along the bottom and pause to munch on coral. All this does is sets you back in your completion rate - so I guess the things you're dropping into the water to match are "coral" that might get eaten by these snails? Oh, the usual "drop" that happens automatically here takes place from the bottom up - stuff floats up making the entire structure hang lower (and thus closer to your losing).
Using objects is a bit annoying in terms of the interface - you have to tap to bring up an item selector list, tap the item you want and then, for the anchor, tap where you want it to drop. Hopefully the snail hasn't moved. So, I mostly ignored the items as I played may way around the 1st island (there are at least four). THere's also a squid that "inks" items so you can't make matches..it's a bit annoying, but the game is rather chill - not very difficult from what I played, but still.
I guess as a twist on match-3 it is interesting and worth taking a look at. I enjoyed not having to aim - as you have to do in other games of this style (e.g. snood).
The games boxart makes it seem like the game is a wacky take on air traffic control in which "hijinks ensue" or something like that. It's actually a pretty serious/button down game - you're air traffic control and you must make sure your planes leave on time, land on time, have gates assigned to them and that planes don't spend too much time in a holding pattern and, more importantly don't crash into each other as they taxi around (or fly into each other).
I played the first airport on the 3 difficulty levels and - it's a surprisingly slow-paced game. You talk to the plan and authorize them to push back from the gate and you wait. There's a lot of waiting involved. This makes it hard to figure out the timing - will this plane take off in time before this other one needs to land? The tutorial explains all the different steps in the takeoff and landing process except for one...and this is the one that gave me the most trouble. When planes are coming in you can tell them to speed up or slow down (there are other options, like assigning a runway and clearing them to land). I never figured out what the speed up/slow down options were for. It wasn't clear to me if I was instructing planes to slow down to a certain speed (180 knots) or if to slow down by 180 knots. I have no idea how fast/slow a knot is in airspeed...also, when and why would I want a plane to speed up?
I only lost once - when two planes on the ground collided as one taxied to its gate and the other made its way to the runway to take off. Oops. But, like I said there can be a significant delay between an instruction/command and it being done - so it was hard to gauge when to start a new action from another plane and so on. Not complaining, just trying to justify the single accident!
What was most surprising is that the game has RUMBLE SUPPORT! I'd forgotten this was even a thing on the DS. Would only work on the older DS models - the ones with both a DS and a GBA cart slot. The rumble pack is essentially a GBA cart that goes into that slot, with the DS game in the DS slot. I think one of the pinball games used it? (Metroid Pinball perhaps? What a great game).
Anyways, that was a real surprise, since the game isn't Nintendo first-party, but rather a Majesco-published game. Also, the game supports up to 8 players in a multi cart setup (each player with their own cart). Wow! I wonder how that played? Do planes that take off on my game land in other players? Are we passing flights to each other? Is it a score chase? (boo, lame) The game's manual has zero information on this, which was a disappointment, but still...I'm intrigued. Not enough to buy 7 copies of the game and try to get 7 others to play...but hey. It makes you wonder why the feature was added in the first place?
Ooh, super intrigued by this - played for several hours and the game is incredibly inscrutable in those first few hours because there is SO MUCH GOING ON. For Roguelikes I keep coming back to the question of how long is the intended run/session intended. I struggle with the ones that are a bit too long - Slay the Spire is probably too long for me, BUT - the game is focused enough in terms of the rules/mechanics/systems that I feel like I can continue to learn.
THis game seems way too big for me in that sense. I was making progress, making progress, and it just kept on going. So, I had no idea if/when I was making bad strategic choices - the feedback loop might be too long there so as to know what I want to do next.
To make matters worse - if I recall - the text on things was super small and hard to read from the comfort of my couch. I see this happen so often that I really wonder what is going on at Sony that they're not catching these things when they do approvals?
Perhaps I'm "playing it wrong" since the game says it supports 2-3 online networked playes? Is the intended experience one where each player controls a character? (you have a party of three) I may have played inefficiently because I wasn't sure if I should try to keep them all together - send the characters off separately (riskier if combat). ANyways, they really leaned into the campaign style boardgame here and I was intrigued and interested as I played - but suddenly the board opened up in a massive way and I realized the entire map was much larger than expected and that I was woefully underpowered for the next area and I just kind of sighed, shrugged and realized that I wasn't sure that I wanted to re-start what was already a multi-hour session....
I've realized I don't have time to spend backtracking all over the place as I try to figure out where I'm supposed to go next - to then die, because new enemy, and having to backtrack all over the place again. Sigh.
This game's simply not for me. I've got too many other games just sitting there waiting to be played. Another way to think about this is that I'm just not that excited or interested to play it - there's plenty of games in the sea, as it where, why not spend the time with the ones you're really enjoying?
This makes me appreciate Celeste's efforts for difficulty accesibility all the more - I was able to keep on going and adjust as needed. But, this game simply isn't designed that way - and I don't think it's about the "genre" (platformer vs metroidvania platformer), but about the design choice of how frequently to place checkpoints, whether or not to allow quick-saving and so on. For me, it really drags down the experience - again, that's for me - so your mileage will vary.
