Stretchmo

A while back I had the chance to review Pushmo, a great puzzle game in which the goal was to reach the…well, goal of each stage.  To get to the goal you have to push and pull blocks in and out as well as utilize objects such as ladders to get there.  It was an interesting take on the puzzle game genre and later spawned a sequel; Crashmo.  Now sadly I never played Crashmo but I now have the opportunity to review the next sequel; Stretchmo.  I’d make a joke that the next game ought to be called Pullmo but since you can already pull blocks that would just be redundant.  Anyway, it’s time to see if Stretchmo can bring anything new to the table.

The premise of Stretchmo is pretty much that of Pushmo in which you solve puzzles by pulling and pushing blocks in and out in order to reach your goal.  However, if that’s all that Stretchmo was it wouldn’t make for a very compelling game and people would complain about why it wasn’t just DLC for Pushmo.  Stretchmo introduces a new way to move the blocks.  In Pushmo you can grab a block by the side and slide it in and out, but that’s it…well, in terms of grabbing it from the side.  In Stretchmo you can now grab the sides of the blocks and pull and push them in and out as well.  You can also run around the back of the puzzle and push and pull the back out, basically making the puzzle 3D in a way.

In later puzzles you’ll encounter different mechanics such as ladders that’ll take you to different parts of the puzzles, as well as arrows you can jump on and extend all blocks of that color up to two spaces out (the maximum you can pull any block) in the direction that the arrow points.  In the early going though it’s one of those things where if you’ve played Pushmo then you’ll have no problems with Stretchmo, even with any new mechanics the game throws at you.

Stretchmo is a game that falls into the category of “freemium” games.  When you first start up the game you have several puzzles you can solve to learn the bare bones basics of the game, but beyond that you can’t do much else until you hit up the 3DS eShop to purchase a puzzle pack.  There are four you can purchase that range from $3 to $5 depending on the pack, or you can get all four for about $10.  Each pack has a rating out of five stars to show how difficult the puzzles can get.  The first pack has one hundred puzzles and start off rather simple and gradually work their way up in difficulty.  The next two packs see the difficulty start to rise a bit more in the early going…and then you have the fourth pack.  I started on the fourth pack first since the puzzles all relate to classic NES characters, but I found out rather quickly that these puzzles are definitely for Stretchmo experts as they get difficult in a hurry, but not to the point that you want to slam your 3DS into the wall.

Much like Pushmo, if you get yourself stuck on a puzzle you have a couple of options.  The first is to rewind time a bit.  You only have a limited amount of time that you can rewind so if you notice that you made a mistake, you might want to make sure you rewind back a bit to correct it before you get too much farther along or it might be too late.  If that ends up being the case or if you just get so far lost that you need to restart the entire puzzle, there’s an orange button you can press that’ll reset all of the blocks back to their original positions.  These are very useful features to have, but just remember that in Stretchmo you can do a lot more moving and pulling so if you have to reset the puzzle, you’re resetting a lot more than you would have back in Pushmo.

A third option is to…well, just skip it.  While you get something for completing all ten puzzles per set in a pack, you only need to complete five of them to move onto the next set.  What’s more is that if you get stumped on a puzzle you can actually do the puzzles within a section in any order you wish.  Very useful especially in later puzzles and packs as more obstacles are introduced, especially in the fourth pack with the aforementioned NES-sprite murals.  Those can get rather tricky and knowing I can just skip over one for the time being and not having to spend many frustrating minutes staring at a bunch of blocks is refreshing.  It is unfortunate however that some of the later puzzles can skip from “head scratching tough” to “downright frustrating” rather quickly, but it’s nothing too terribly bad.

If you enjoyed making puzzles in Pushmo, you’ll be happy to know that the Pushmo Studio has returned in Stretchmo…as long as you buy at least one puzzle pack.  Naturally with more types of puzzles and gadgets than in Pushmo you have more options when making puzzles, including both 2D and 3D puzzles.  Once you create your puzzle you can save it and then create a QR code for it.  Naturally you can also import puzzles from QR codes.  However, I tried to read Pushmo QR codes into Stretchmo to see if you can import older puzzles and sadly you can’t, you’ll just get a message saying it’s not a Stretchmo QR code.  I have absolutely no knowledge in programming QR codes so I’m not sure if it’s even possible, but seeing as how Stretchmo lets you make 2D puzzles I’m kind of surprised you can’t import Pushmo puzzles.

Overall, Stretchmo is an excellent game for the 3DS for quite a few reasons.  If you’re familiar with Pushmo and enjoyed that, you’ll likely enjoy Stretchmo and all of the new features that come with it.  If you’re new to the series, the “freemium” model is very well done, offering several puzzles to get your feet wet and four puzzle packs for three to five dollars each to continue on.  Sadly you can’t even construct basic puzzles without getting at least one puzzle pack, but if you get all four at once, you’re basically paying ten dollars for two-hundred fifty puzzles.  Though Pushmo is about seven dollars for about the same amount of content, I feel that the new additions and concepts in Stretchmo makes it worth it.

The only other thing I really have to criticize are the tutorials.  Any time you have a new concept or gimmick pop up you have to go through a bit of a tutorial on it.  Okay, that’s understandable, but you can’t skip it and just mashing A doesn’t quite do it.  For some reason you have to wait a few seconds between dialogue boxes before you can proceed to the next one, which is pretty annoying.  If you’ve already played Pushmo then you know the absolute basics and if you’re like me you just want to skip it and get on with the game.  Beyond that, Stretchmo is a fun puzzle game much like Pushmo and it makes me want to check out Crashmo at some point.  If you’re looking for a fun puzzle game to pass some time or you like creating your own puzzles, Stretchmo is definitely a game to check out.