Tidbits | Peppy’s Adventure – Video Game Fables – Super Ember Kaboom

In Tidbits we cover games that are difficult to cover in our regular review template. In this Tidbits we review Peppy’s Adventure, Video Game Fables and Super Ember Kaboom

Peppy’s Adventure | 73% – Peppy’s Adventure is a challenging game to play, but it is not a bad one. The visuals are simple but appealing, and the music, despite being repetitive, is pleasant and captivating. The premise, like most things in Peppy’s Adventure, is straightforward: The Hooded Fox and his minions have kidnapped a group of bunnies from a town, and you must rescue them all.

You can rewind time for up to 10 seconds at any time, which is useful. You can also use magical flutes to skip stages, but this has several drawbacks, including the fact that you only have three of them and must get a 2-star rating on every level in a world to unlock its monster; also, if you want your flute back, you must complete the skipped level. Some levels had hints accessible, but the ones I looked at didn’t help me at all because they merely showed me what I had already done, not what I needed to do differently to solve the level.
There are 126 levels separated into six worlds; I only made it to world 2, Frozen Shore. To finish a level, you must eat all cabbages, move with the proper timing, and dodge obstacles and foxes; how does eating cabbages aid the captured bunnies? I have no idea, just as I have no idea why you can skip levels if you have to finish them all anyway.

I wish I could tell you about all the new mechanics provided by each world, but since I didn’t experience most of them, I can only tell you about the ones I did. There are buttons that open/close mechanical traps and obstacles, leaf traps, keys that can be picked up and used both by you and enemies to unlock paths, ice blocks that you can travel on when in water (once going one way you can’t stop until you’re out of the ice so watch out for that) and carrots that make you go faster.

Written by: Colombo

Reviewed on: PC

Video Game Fables | 67% – Video Game Fables may have a title that doesn’t seem very descriptive (and not very Google Search friendly) but the developer Momiji Studios does show a knack for entertaining, especially through the clever writing. It’s a lighthearted turn-based RPG that doesn’t take itself too seriously with a princess, an alien bad guy, and a wannabe hero setting off on an epic quest together. The actual combat itself doesn’t do a lot to change the regular formula up, and the visuals can seem a bit amateuristic at times, but the game uses these as a way to make fun of itself, with the thin pixel-wide princess escaping from between cell bars or funny dialogues highlighting the usual videogame tropes. It reminds me of an indie-devs take at creating a Paper Mario RPG. Worth checking out if you’re a diehard RPG fan or are just looking for a good Chuckle.

Written by: Robby

Reviewed on: PC

Super Ember Kaboom | 75% – Super Ember Kaboom is a product of a Kickstarter campaign, there were two tiers of backing available and one of them gave backers access to a unique ability no one else has access to. There is a predecessor to this game under a slightly different developer name on Steam, but it was made by the same person, Josh Koenig, and it’s called Ember Kaboom which is a way simpler-looking game with a few different mechanics. Although the game’s graphics are pixelated, they are pretty to look at, and it does maintain the cute personality the whole game has. The soundtrack for Super Ember Kaboom is best described as sounding like a Shoujo anime soundtrack, and it does go in well with the rest of the game. Super Ember Kaboom won’t be difficult to learn to play if you’ve played a platformer before. You can move, jump, attack, and gather items. There are four diamonds in each level and they are used to open specific stages, and for every 30 fruits you collect, you receive an additional life. Like in a Mario game, you can acquire and use powers, but they have a use restriction here and you don’t lose power when you are hurt. There are levels with a one-minute time limit, levels where a ghost of yourself follows you and injures you on touch, “inverted” levels where you can only see a shadow of everything, automatically moving levels, standard levels with no time limit, and boss battles. You may customize how many hearts you have, which is a cool feature of the game. The absence of achievements and a problem where fruits get stuck within walls are the only drawbacks to this game. You can finish Super Ember Kaboom in around 1.5 hours and reach 100% completion in 2 to 2.5 hours.

Written by: Colombo

Reviewed on: PC