Review: TumbleSeed

The world is on the verge of falling, says the legend. The supreme mountain dies slowly and the only way to save is to plant a new tree at its very top. The mission is not at all naïve, but it will have to get a small seed, quite accidentally The Chosen One, from the semen tribe living at the foot of the mountain.

Sounds silly? This is exactly the tune of TumbleSeed, the indie jam that dropped our fists and controls over the last month, and with which we had dimmed and clawed the teeth, while the background was cracking unbelievably cheerful music. If we do not jog in front of the field, it is a matter of explaining how a seed can be the protagonist of a video game.
You will, in fact, manage the green beam on which the already mentioned ball-seed is rolling, and careful balancing will have to be carried through several zones (rising weight) up to the top of the mountain. The uniqueness of this game does not lie in the fact that you carry one seed (or beam), or in a very pleasing drawing and visual design, but in a specific control scheme. Namely, you will move the beam to the left and right axes, that is, to each side of the beam with separate buttons to determine whether it is going up or down. This is done with the keys 'W' and 'S', ie cursor arrows, and on the analog stick control. In this way, you will shift the balance of your passenger, who will, by slope and inertia, roll to one or the other side of the beam.

Overcoming this unusual control system is by itself a fairly demanding thing. Even after a few hours of playing, it's easy for you to fall asleep and misjudge the corners, but this is far from the real challenge of this game. The path that is ahead of you is full of obstacles and hostile creatures, about which you will have to be extremely careful and often millimeters precise. There is an unbelievable satisfaction in playing TumbleSeed, especially when you suddenly swallow a seed and steadily pass through the needles to safety.


In addition to trying to keep a sperm out of the spindle and spit, your task will be to collect crystals and activate numerous special abilities to increase the chances of reaching the top. At certain locations (deployed generously through the levels) it is possible to enter a special menu where you use the crystals. So you can, for example, buy a little spear with which the semen repels your opponents or put a banner in the place where you will repeat that part if you fall into the hole (instead of returning to the very beginning). Also, you can "grow" your crystals and get dressed. What exactly gives you each new field, you change yourself to the change of fashion in which seed is found (there are four). Additionally, at each level, you can pick up additional skill variants (in total thirty games) and you will have the chance to test your work before you get back to your climb. In any case, juggling the crystals and the ability of the seed is what will make your mountain climbing up to the tune of tireless thinking and experimenting with numerous combinations.

For TumbleSeed you will surely hear that you are a roguelike or roguelike, primarily because it generates random levels and likes to kill the player, however, since that particular genre/system lends very little. Each climb to the top of the mountain begins with the same seed that has the same four abilities - placing flags, thorns, collecting crystals and supplementing the health. If you pick up or unlock somewhere - you miss the moment you lose your last life, and that can be the first ten minutes of gameplay. An even greater disadvantage is that the content is pretty much stuck, so besides an adventure that can be completed for an hour (if you're a ninja!), There are still daily and time challenges and ... that's it. This should be taken into account before you take 15 euros, as many authors ask for the game.

If it was not clear - TumbleSeed is an extremely tough game where the death is incredibly common. You have only three lives, there are no classic checkpoints(there is a way to make teleport to later zones), and playing is pretty much relied on a hacked system "squeezing while you're tapping" and tapping the terrain to avoid unpleasant surprises. A randomly generated mountain is a mining field made up of holes, obstacles, and traps, although fauna is not naïve and is often aggressive and misleading any soaky life of a semen. The Wandering factor puts you on the grace and helplessness of the mountain, so one passage may be a bush (at least in the first and the second zone), while at the beginning at the very beginning a horde of strong creatures may come upon you or that you will come across the whole zone only less useful special abilities. You will often feel deceived in such situations. 

Like most rogues and other random-playing games, TumbleSeed has a select audience who will be happy to spend days playing, lightly touched, while for a hundred times over the same deck just because of the euphoria of final arrival to the top and revealing the secret that the mountain is hiding. Many players will never see the end of the game, and its designers are just expecting. Let your cheerful colors and playful music not be scams, the world of rolling seeds is a sham and reserved for those with excessive steel nerves.


Rate:6/10