Puzzle Dazzle Review - Beats and Blocks are Back
Ever since the creation of the falling block puzzle genre, developers have been attempting to reinvent it. Tetsuya Mizuguchi, perhaps more than anyone, has stood out. First with the PSP showstopper, Lumines, which replaced shapes with bi-coloured square blocks that would be erased to the music’s beat, and then with The Tetris Effect, which saw his pursuit of bringing audio-visual synesthesia back to the classic original. Puzzle Dazzle is a block-matching game that asks players to complete objectives in their levels while wowing them with the accompanying imagery and music.
With so much competition and innovation, does Smash Game Studios’ Puzzle Dazzle stand out from the crowd?
When starting up Puzzle Dazzle, I was met with a rather anaemic main menu. There were only two different modes to choose from: Arcade and Survival. Arcade represents the bulk of the game, boasting fifty different levels for players to progress through. Survival is closer to the traditional falling block puzzle game, where block placement matters to avoid failure for as long as possible. I mostly played Arcade mode as I wanted to see what the next level would look like, but I found the time limit jarring. Survival doesn’t have time limits; it’s based entirely on skill, so players can instead enjoy everything Puzzle Dazzle has to offer in terms of atmosphere.
In both modes, blocks drop from the top of the playing field, slowly descending; standard stuff for the genre. Emulating Lumines, the blocks come in two colours which correspond with the level’s theme. In contrast to Lumines, though, not all of the blocks are squares: some are only two blocks instead of four. The shape and colours of the blocks are randomised, which can cause issues when you are after a particular combination, but that is the nature of the game.
As I’m accustomed to playing Tetris, it took a while to get used to how the blocks settled on the existing ones, but it was a nice change to learn a different way to play. This became more challenging as I progressed, and a third colour was added to the mix, increasing the difficulty and requiring me to change up my strategy.
Aside from changing from two coloured themes to three, Puzzle Dazzle also features three difficulties in the Arcade mode: Cosy, Moderate and Expert. The only thing this affects is the time limit in the levels, with cosy allowing the most time and expert giving the least. I wasn’t a fan of the timed nature of the levels, as this seemed to clash against the sense of aesthetic immersion the game was creating. It would have been perfect if the cosy difficulty had no time limit, and the moderate difficulty had introduced them rather than all three requiring one. It also doesn’t help that the game doesn’t bring attention to this beyond a small notice at the beginning alongside the level’s objective.
Speaking of objectives, each level of the Arcade mode has a goal that each player needs to clear before they can move on to the next section. The time limit mentioned earlier is tied specifically to this. In contrast to other block-clearing games where the general gist is “score goes up”, Puzzle Dazzle often has multiple targets that the player must complete to progress. Some of these are simple, ‘clear x number of this colour block’-style assignments, while others ask players to make matches larger than the standard 4 blocks. The hardest objective is the combo one, which requires a combination of skill and pure luck to complete.
These objectives were often my undoing when playing the game, as clearing space is so second-nature. Unless I went in with the objective at the forefront of my mind, I would simply slip back into playing “Survival”. This is the quiet genius of Puzzle Dazzle. It emulates other falling block games, lulls players into a false sense of security, and then laughs when they become frustrated because they’re playing it wrong. And I fell for this, again and again. It was only when I threw away the notions of Tetris and Lumines that I stopped struggling with the game. Puzzle Dazzle never told me to play like that; it just used what I expected against me; by the end, I couldn’t help thinking ‘fair play’.
I’m not completely blameless in falling into the trap of playing Puzzle Dazzle as a standard Tetris-like. As players focus on placing blocks, the backgrounds display images that match the level’s theme. The theme colours are sampled from the background to ensure they are cohesive.
If this sounds like Tetris Effect, that’s because it’s a deliberate inspiration. Puzzle Dazzle does nothing to shy away from this comparison, which encourages players to believe that this game plays like Tetris. Sneaky. I like it, but still… sneaky.
Another thing is that the game boasts that there are 50 handcrafted levels, and while this is technically true, after level 25, the themes are reused. Some are less obvious as they look like a music visualiser from the ‘00s, but when the level is a static picture of a mountain, or a meandering journey through a Japanese garden, it stands out. Another problem with the moving backgrounds is that while they do help with the immersion and enjoyment of the game, they can cause simulator sickness for some. I only encountered it during the level that used Mandalas, but others may have issues with multiple levels. There are no accessibility options in the game at the time of writing, but I hope they change it so everyone is able to enjoy it.
Another similarity that Puzzle Dazzle has with Lumines and Tentris Effect is, of course, the music! Unlike the latter two games, though, Smash Game Studios hasn’t created any of the music in the game, instead opting to use music from Magic Records. If you haven’t heard of Magic Records… neither had I. In short, it’s a source of copyright-free music. Music is expensive, so I can understand why they went this route, but it is disappointing and leads me to wonder what other assets aren’t of their creation, and this, along with some AI boasting on the Smash Games website, raises some eyebrows about earlier claims of being handcrafted. Especially as it would be easier to hide AI in some levels than others.
Puzzle Dazzle takes components from other block-dropping puzzle games and adds its unique twist to the genre. Turning the players’ expectations into a detriment and requiring them to rethink how they play is a clever twist. Aside from the repeating level themes and the possibility of ties to AI, it is an enjoyable experience that feels familiar, yet foreign. Does Puzzle Dazzle stand out amongst the crowd? It may not at first, but it certainly does by the end.
Puzzle Dazzle was reviewed on PC with code kindly supplied by the publisher.
