Review | Pushy and Pully in Blockland

LifeisXbox’s Pushy and Pully in Blockland review | I don’t know about you but when I was a kid, I spent hours on these websites that had a ton of games you could play for free. One of the games I played the most was Bomberman (also known as Playing With Fire). The principle was simple: you are in a square environment filled with boxes. You need to drop bombs and blast through these boxes in order to reach your opponent, who starts on the other side of the screen. Rings a bell? Pushy and Pully in Blockland clearly draws inspiration from games like Bomberman, so I was super excited to dive into this arcade-like game and get nostalgic!

ℹ️ | Maui played Pushy and Pully in Blockland for 3 hours on Xbox Series X. This game is also available on Steam, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation.

What we liked!

• Pixlated graphics | If there is one thing I love about Pushy and Pully in Blockland, it’s the arcade, retro style graphics. This pixelated beauty is really pretty to look at, and the bright colors really come out great. There are 50 levels, spread over 5 different worlds, and each has its own handcrafted vibe. Defeat enemies in the icy surroundings, or find yourself high up in the clouds with rainbows and stars. It all looks super, super cute. So do Pushy and Pully themselves by the way. They are blue and pink haired kids that simply look adorable with their big eyes and
• Enemy variety | Okay, there is a second thing that I enjoyed during my time in Blockland: the different types of enemies. I guess this kind of goes hand in hand with my love for the art style. There are plenty of enemies that will try and stop Pushy and Pully, and even though enemies are supposed to be scary, I found them to be kind of cute a lot of times due to the retro style. Anyway, running into all kinds of different enemies is always fun, and kept them from becoming repetitive.
• Co-op adventure | I first played Pushy and Pully in single player mode. Unfortunately, I’m not very good at logical thinking and anticipating my next moves most of the time, and I ended up really sucking at this game. I called in the help of my boyfriend, who is usually a lot better at challenging gameplay. It turns out this game is a lot of more fun with two players, which makes sense as it was designed as a co-op game. You each have three lives, and when you die in a level, you don’t respawn and the other player is left to finish the chore. I guarantee some fun, and yes, some frustrating moments with your co-player!

Somewhere between

• All over the place | Pushy and Pully felt like it was a bit all over in multiple ways. First of all, I feel like, when it comes to difficulty, Pushy and Pully in Blockland was a bit all over the place. Rather than increaing difficulty over the levels, one level might be difficult, while the next one is ridiciously easy. Second, what is up with this huge drop of enemies in certain levels? Do you know that meme where a person is being created and there is one thing about them that’s just over the top. Like for me that would be my love for dogs, so it would be like ‘a little bit of brains, a little bit of empathy, and oops, we dropped the whole bag of love for dogs’. And that is exactly how the enemies got distributed in Pushy and Pully, I’m sure of it! Some levels felt so very chaotic, it wasn’t even fun anymore. And third, it feels like the developers wanted to combine different genres of games in Pushy and Pully, somehow? There are the clear Bomberman elements, but there is also the pushing blocks of the same color together (these can generate extra weapons for you to use), which reminded of games like Bejeweld and Candy Crush (including the bright colors and symbols). And then there’s even some platforming elements, so I don’t know, it felt a little overwhelming, and not in a good way.
• Replay value but… | There is some replay value in Pushy and Pully in Blockland as well, which is a welcome addition since this game is over rather quickly. Especially if you play with a friend. This replay value lies in the gaining of stars for every level. You can either gain one, two or three stars. Sometimes, getting through a level will already prove difficult, let alone gain all three stars, but hey, that adds an interesting challenge. Or does it? I have not yet figured out what ensures you three stars. There are stars, but how you get one, two or three stars remains a mystery. I did get all stars in some levels, but I have no clue what I did to get them.
• Boss battles | You’ll be facing a total of five bosses. Usually, I really suck and bosses, but I’m always very excited to face them since they provide some extra challenge. In this game, however, the bosses all felt pretty much the same and were not that difficult to beat. I had a much harder time beating the regular levels, and I just quickly fought my way through the bosses. I feel like the word ‘boss level’ is not really applicable in this game.

What we disliked

• Repetitive | Since the difficulty is a bit all over the place, the entire gameplay can feel really repetitive. And quite fast too. In theory, you are basically doing the same thing over and over again, even if there is enemy variety. Your goal doesn’t really change, and even though there are bosses to switch it up, the overall gameplay felt rather repetitive.
• Controls | The controls are super simple, you move left, right, up, or down. However, their execution is pretty terrible. You move pretty slow, and the smallest touch will move your player to the next square on the playfield. It also happened that my character moved too many spaces, like two instead of one. It was all just very frustrating and I felt like Pushy and Pully were leading their own lives, rather than being controlled by the players behind the screen.

How long to beat the story | 2 to 3 hours
How long to achieve 1000G | I’d say 15+ hours thanks to an achievement that requires you to complete the game without losing any lives. Good luck with that.
Similar with | Bomberman, Don’t Pull, Three Wonders

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