Buildings are burning and the world has ended.  Kind of a dark way to start out a game where you play as a happy little toaster-like robot wearing a poncho.  In the game you play as Poncho, who must explore a 2-D 16-bit styled world filled with other robots wandering around not knowing what to do.  Your task is to find an item left by your creator which will supposedly save humanity somehow.  The game is available to download on the Nintendo Wii U eShop.

As Poncho, you can move left and right and jump.  And that’s pretty much it except you can also shift between the foreground and background, hence the game’s gimmick.  You can usually see the platforms in front or behind you where you can shift, and you push the R button to shift forward and the L button to shift back.  Personally, I would’ve had you shift forward with the R button, and back with the ZR button, since it’s ‘behind’ the other button. Sometimes you must time your shifts so you land on platforms that move in and out of the background as well.

As you play, you may find colored keys, which can unlock doors with the same color key on them.  You’ll also collect red squares, and if you meet up with a certain robot in a level, you can exchange those squares for more keys.  The problem is the game doesn’t really tell you any of this, you just have to figure it out on your own. Later on you’ll also learn how to repair certain robots to build a junkyard army, so you’ll be doing a bit of backtracking.

Poncho has several problems, though.  As you play, sometimes the screen will freeze for a second while it loads, and if you’re in the middle of a jump, that can be problematic.  Goals and objectives are unclear and sometimes it can be hard to know where you need to go next.  Sometimes it’s hard to see what platforms you can jump on, especially if they are in front of you, and timing your jumps on shifting blocks can be annoying.  Luckily you just appear back on the last platform you jumped off of if you fall, and you get unlimited lives.  If you play on the TV screen, the Wii U gamepad has a very bright white light on it, which is distracting.  The game also seems rather short, at only around ten stages (unless there are more I don’t see yet), and while you can revisit them to get more items, it just doesn’t seem that much fun.  Plus, I had no idea where to go at around the seventh level or so.

Kid Factor:

Aside from the dark intro, nothing too terribly violent here.  If Poncho falls he just reappears back where you jumped, and if a block hits you while it is shifting, you just get digitized in a square light and warp out of the way.  Reading skill is helpful for some of the text, but not necessary just to play.  Younger gamers may get frustrated or bored because of the lack of clear goals and gameplay quirks.  Poncho is rated E for Everyone.

Tags: Game Reviews