In Tidbits, we cover games that are difficult to cover in our regular review template. In this Tidbits article, we review Alice in Wonderland: a Jigsaw Puzzle, Road Stones, and Prison Tycoon: Under New Management.
Alice in Wonderland: a Jigsaw Puzzle Tale
Review Score – 70%
During the Covid months in Belgium, I started to look for ways to pass the time, and one of the ideas was jigsaw puzzles. I loved doing them but I didn’t think about the required room for a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle. So rather quickly that jigsaw went into a closet never to be used again.
That’s the wonderful thing about Alice in Wonderland: a Jigsaw Puzzle Tale, you make it on your television screen and your progress is saved. It isn’t exactly the same though, it misses that physical searching and piecing together the pieces.
It isn’t always easy either to do the jigsaw with a controller, but there are a few things that help you. Zooming in and out or only seeing pieces from the left or right corners. The Alice in Wonderland-themed puzzles is all created by Kátia Numakura. She did absolutely stunning work with the 12 different jigsaw drawings. Each of them can be broken into 60, 135, 240, 375, and 700 pieces. So younger and older Xbox gamers can find the perfect challenge!
Written by: Dae Jim
Reviewed on: Xbox Series X
Road Stones
Review Score – 38%
In Road Stones, you control a mage who is tasked with… well, I honestly don’t know. Road Stones features a handful of painted story panels that don’t explain anything. Back to the mage, he can control crystals that can damage enemies.
So the first thing you have to do is find the best placement for crystals so the enemies don’t escape, nothing new for the tower defence genre. So the developer, HugePixel thought about a new gameplay mechanic. That idea was to turn our mage into Pac-Man. By collecting orbs that spawn randomly across the level you can purchase or upgrade crystals to make your defence more capable. It is utterly boring to move your slow character to collect all the orbs, and the required amount to buy new things become higher and higher.
In combination with enemies that try to hunt you, Road Stones becomes some kind of walking simulator. The worst thing about the game is the difficulty balancing, I’m pretty sure they didn’t bother to playtest Road Stones, some levels are near impossible to survive as the game immediately throws powerful enemies. You simply can’t deal enough damage and it is extremely frustrating, later levels are a piece of cake as your crystals become so powerful that they deal screen-wide damage. Visually Road Stones looks exactly like Kingdom Rush but a few levels worse. It is a real shame, the game has a few neat things but the overall package is simply not worth your money or time.
Written by: Dae Jim
Reviewed on: Xbox Series X
Prison Tycoon: Under New Management
Review Score – 35%
Prison tycoon is one of those tycoon games you wish never actually happened. While the quality in tycoon games has been on a steady decline the past few years, this one does its gosh darndest best to show us why it’s been on a downhill.
With bugs littering the place, even game-breaking ones… I quickly lost interest in this title. One of the most game-breaking bugs I’ve experienced during my session playing this title was quick-loading a save file. It starts loading and then… just outright stops mid-load. Though if I do this with the same save file from the title menu, it worked perfectly. I timed one of my loading crashes and even though the game IS loading, it just doesn’t complete. I was on the loading screen for over 40 minutes when I eventually gave up. Also, not being able to see what type of building you’re placing because the name tags are missing in the building GUI? That’s a big no-no as well.
Visually, Prison Tycoon isn’t much to shake a fist at either. It’s got some bright colours, but that’s about it if I’m being honest. Nothing there that really gave me a sense of wow, that looks great. Moreover, I found that the boring aesthetics made everything just one bland blob to look at. On the topic of audio don’t go expecting much either. It sounds like most of the effects and music just come out of a free-to-use library rather than something original. Gameplay-wise, this one also disappoints by providing you with a boring sandbox feeling more than an actual value game. There’s no reason to do anything and frankly just feels like the developers didn’t know what to do with this one.
Written by: Alexis
Reviewed on: Xbox Series X
Hello, I’m Victoria. I’m from the UK and have been playing video games for as long as I can remember; back on DreamCast. I’ve pretty much fallen for Xbox since I was around eight years old and remember BioShock being my first game on the Xbox360. Although I find it thoroughly enjoyable to not only experience gameplay, I also find comfort in getting lost and engrossed in the online worlds that sometimes differ greatly from what we know. Another side of my Xbox passion would be achievement hunting and gamerscore. I thrive when I hear the little sound of one popping up on the screen and I’m always finding ways to work on my backlog when possible. Horror is my favourite genre so if you have any recommendations, don’t be afraid to send them my way!