Review: Chuchel

Name: Chuchel

Cost:

£7.99 / $9.99 On PC
£4.49 / $4.99 on Android
£4.99 / $4.99 on Apple App store
£7.99 / $9.99 on Mac store

 Avaliable on: PC (Steam, GOG, itchi.io), Mac (Mac store), Android (Google playstore) and Iphone / Ipad

Reviewed on: Laptop 1

Review:

Chuchel is a point and click adventure game that according to wikipedia runs in adobe flash as its engine. The artwork is very high quality and the game has a lot of well thought out puzzles. I should give it credit for being a point and click game that does give you hints for some of the weirder puzzles (which I did use). The puzzles aren't the level of the infamous Discworld game logic so often you'll only a small hint and quick look with solutions will only be given after the game determines that you've explored the puzzle a bit already.

The music for the game is also really cool and fits the anarchic style of the game and animation.

Breaking up the puzzles and quite fun little mini games, from sort of parody versions of popular arcade games, to snail racing (yes really) to robot boxing matches and plenty of other stuff so you never feel bogged down with the puzzles.

It's worth noting the game is designed so it's in episodes as such, with each episode being differentiated by the games name appearing to sort of introduce it. To me, I'd say the game very much is best played sticking to playing through an episode and then taking a break as the anarchic nature of it can sometimes feel a bit much in longer spells. With using some hints I beat the game in just over 2 hours and I think cleaning up all the achievements might top it up to 3 hours.

The only real negatives I can point to for the game is for the price it is a bit short though it does feel high quality. I also had a couple of instances of it suffering from an issue that seems common with flash engine games, where there was a brief moment of black boxes being on the screen before certain art assets loaded it (this only happened about twice for maybe less than a second each time).

Verdict:

It's quite hard to talk about Chuchel in any great length as it's got high quality art and sound assets, functions well and varies up it's gameplay. It doesn't feel like it overstays it's welcome but it does feel a little short for the price though again that's made up for by how high quality it is.

As is the score for Chuchel reflects an attempt to balance the quality of the game vs the length and lack of it really offering much replay ability once you know the solution to the puzzles.  If you are fine paying the asking price for 2-3 hours of fun then this game will be for you. If however you're looking for something to provide you a lot of playtime for your money this isn't it. On sale I'd say Chuchel is very much worth picking up just to experience it. At its normal price it's very much over to what you are looking for and for me honestly I'd say it comes in a bit below one of its contemporaries or one of the developers previous titles that I reviewed long ago on another blog.

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