Wally the Walrus is up to no good, and it’s Peppy the Penguin’s job to see to it that his block manipulating schemes are foiled. But what’s that smell? Is it the sticky floors of a 1980′s arcade or just half baked penguin pancakes. This and other mysteries solved in our full review of yyrGames’ Falling.

Gameplay

Falling is an action-puzzle game that kicks things off by asking you to “please insert coin” as if to get you prepped and ready for an authentic arcade experience. You’ll be taking control of a penguin named Peppy in an attempt to help him destroy blocks while fending off the despicable Wally the Walrus. Fortunately for you, Peppy has come prepared to do more than just slide on his belly.  In fact Peppy can not only jump but also pickup, push, throw, and kick blocks like nobodies business.

In typical block game fashion, new blocks will descend from the ceiling. During the introduction of new blocks Peppy must take evasive actions or risk becoming a penguin pancake, delicious but dead none the less. On the topic of death, the game begins with 3 lives and awards additional lives as specific point benchmarks are exceeded.

Enough about pancakes, let’s get back to blocks. There are three ways to remove blocks from the field of play: by forcefully knocking like-colored blocks into one another, kicking the blocks until they break, or intentionally allowing your bonus timer to reach zero resulting in Armageddon, or in other words cause fire balls to rain down from the heavens destroying blocks and penguins alike.

While all this block craziness is going on, Wally the Walrus will make regular appearances just to spice things up. Multiple Wally(s) can exist simultaneously and as the game goes on, he will not only occur more frequently but also gain further block manipulation abilities; for example, moving massive piles of blocks, kicking blocks, deflecting blocks, and jumping over blocks. This is typically a strategy reserved for situations when a row becomes full and Peppy has no choice but to let his bonus points run out.

The challenge presented by Wally can typically be overcome by playing strategically. However, there are issues in the game that cannot be. For instance, the controls of the game can at times feel unresponsive, particularly during block throwing. Additionally, when a block is thrown at another like-colored block, they will often stack rather than break. This leaves you in a particularly compromised position with a block hanging over another that will require reorientation.

Also on the list of unintended challenges, there is also a bug related to picking up blocks. When a block is held over head and another block is pushed into it by Wally, the blocks will clip together and cause you to become stuck relegated to accepting death.

Now, this isn’t technically a bug, but it is a questionable design decision. Falling really is a retro arcade style game, but it also talks up its modern features, such as customizable controls and online scoring. However, the game makes no attempt to do any form of saving, as a consequence of this all local high score data and control customizations are wiped out every time the game is quit. And the online scoring? Well the developer has opted to forego any use of XBox LIVE in favor of a crude code generation system that requires you to manually save score data on their website.

Audio Visual

Falling’s graphics and sounds are both in the style of the games you’d see in arcades during the golden age of such venues. It looks and sounds like you’ve fallen through a time warp in a good way as it does have a certain charm about it. All the sprites are cute and animated pixel art, the backgrounds are tiled and static, and the music is very chip tune.

But this ultra retro arcade stylistic approach can be a blessing and a curse, obviously those who like or can tolerate the style will be appriciative of the care taken to recreate the classic experience. Not only that, I’m sure yyrGames managed to save a good deal of time with such simplistic assets. However, those who aren’t fans of all things square, will likely find themselves turned off by Falling before they even demo it.

Summary

Falling is a decent classic arcade feeling action-puzzle game that will appeal to fans of the style. However, the game’s various gameplay bugs and design flaws make it feel a bit half baked. At 80 Microsoft Points it’s still likely to garner a reasonable amount of enjoyment and is certainly not the worst use of a dollar.