A medieval kingdom is having a festival with a great big cake.  But when the greedy Krinkles catch a whiff of the cake, they want it all for themselves.  So these little creatures, which look like little walking balls with sharp teeth, come invading the castle looking for goodies.  Now it’s up to a wizard and his living, talking glove to protect the kingdom in this cartoony tower defense style game.  It’s downloadable for Sony’s current consoles, but reviewed on PS3 here.

In the game, the Krinkles come from the top of the screen and run downward where the wizard and castle wall is.  If too many of them make it to the wall, it’ll break and you’ll lose the level.  You control the wizard’s magic glove, who can fly anywhere on the playfield.  The wizard gives the talking glove some magic rings to wear, that give the user elemental spells.  You can zap the Krinkles with lightning, create walls of flames, freeze them in place, and more.

But you’ll have to be careful.  If you use a spell too many times, the ring will break and you’ll have to wait for it to charge up again for you to use it.  That’s a problem because those Krinkles move very fast, and your spells have limited range and are very weak at first.  Later on you’ll be able to upgrade your rings, but at the beginning of the game, the learning curve is quite steep with the weak spells.  I think this game would be better suited to a console with a touch screen or a tablet device, and if it were a bit easier, too.  Where it is right now, the game is a bit too hard and frustrating to be any fun.

Kid Factor:

Krinkle Krusher is rated E-10 with ESRB descriptors of Fantasy Violence and Crude Humor.  You can zap and burn Krinkles with magic spells, but violence is only cartoony and they just fall over and disappear when defeated.  The glove also makes plenty of snide comments and they even say “Oh my God” in the text, too.  Reading skill is helpful for the instructions, also.  While most kids will be delighted with the colorful graphics and characters, they’ll probably also be frustrated at the high level of difficulty and steep learning curve.

Tags: Game Reviews