REVIEW | Potata: Fairy Flower

Potata: Fairy Flower review | Remember all that curiosity you once felt when you were little? Learning many new things as time passes can make you feel great, but how about that feeling of wanting to go on some kind of adventure? That’s where our protagonist Potata finds herself, until one day, she starts one by simply picking a flower she shouldn’t have. Potata: Fairy Flower is a cute platformer that feels like an interactive children’s book in a way, with some key differences.

What we Liked!

• Like a children’s book | The first thing I thought when I started playing Potata: Fairy Flower was that it looked like a children’s book. Even though it uses different but similar art styles on cutscenes, gameplay, and dialogues, it still keeps a cute art style that seems to be directed towards kids, and they all look pretty. The art will undoubtedly be what will attract players the most to play the game.

• Easy to play | There aren’t any real secrets when it comes to the gameplay here, you can jump, pick up and use items, collect currency, attack, and interact with characters, there’s also something I won’t spoil about the gameplay, as it can only be done later in the game.

Mixed Feelings

• Could you (not) repeat that, please? | Potata: Fairy Flower‘s soundtrack fits nicely with the game’s visuals, never going overboard with how much energy it gives you, it’s mostly relaxing, with some medieval-like tracks to it. The problem is that it feels repetitive and got me pretty tired of it after a while, but I’ve played games that were a lot worse in that aspect, so it’s fair to say Potata: Fairy Flower doesn’t have a bad soundtrack.

• Puzzles | I’m not the brightest when it comes to puzzles, but I’m also not terrible at them. Potata: Fairy Flower‘s puzzles weren’t particularly good or bad, but some of them felt like they didn’t need to exist. Some examples of puzzles here are: having to form a specific figure out of Tetris-like blocks, connecting a line through a path, and having to click on certain spaces to fill others around them. I feel like having most puzzles tied to other in-game mechanics instead of using a cursor specifically for them is what should have been done to make them feel better.

• Not deep at all | A young witch who yearns for an adventure goes to a nearby forest to fetch ingredients that can be used by her mother to create a potion that can be used to cure her pet fox. When she gets there, she finds a beautiful flower and angers a fairy who protects her village from evil by doing so. There are some dialogues where you can express different emotions by choosing dialogue options, but they didn’t seem to have any impact on the game or its story. There are some scrolls that are usually letters from the village’s inhabitants you can find that add a little bit to this world, but I didn’t find them to be too interesting. While I don’t think games need to have a deep story to be good, Potata: Fairy Flower‘s story is pretty simple, and felt more like a background than anything else.

What we Disliked

• Grammar mistakes | There are some grammar mistakes here and there, and some phrases that could be reformulated to sound better, but since Potata: Fairy Flower‘s developers are only two russians, I do understand how these happened, it’s still worth mentioning they exist though.

• Difficulty | I understand games can look cute and be challenging at the same time, just like Ori and the Blind Forest. However, Potata: Fairy Flower has some difficulty spikes that don’t feel natural, with some bits being simple to get through, others where the nearest checkpoint doesn’t feel as near as it should be, and boss fights being sometimes annoying and tiresome to go through. Bosses consist of you avoiding them, things they throw, and their projectiles, and sometimes attacking them, it didn’t feel fun or rewarding to beat them.

• These should be different | I frequently felt like the camera wasn’t following Potata properly, it felt like it was getting stuck for a tiny amount of time before moving, and it didn’t feel smooth. There’s also a feature that whenever you attack or pick currency up, your controller does a weak vibration in response, and I wanted so badly to turn that off, but there wasn’t an option to do so.

How long to beat the story | 5-7 hours
How long to achieve 1000G | 6-9 hours
You’ll love this game if you like these | GRIS, Ori and the Blind Forest, and other similar platformers.

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