The quality of a puzzle platformer relies entirely, and
obviously, in the quality of the puzzles it presents. If you don’t have clever, varied, and satisfying puzzles to
solve, no one will care how cute your flying robot is or how neat the
backgrounds are. That is the problem
that Unmechanical: Extended faces – It is just a really easy and boring puzzle
game. It doesn’t do anything
particularly poorly, but it won't wow you, either. See all the details here in our full Unmechanical: Extended
review.Game Details
- Publisher: Grip Digital
- Developer: Grip Games, Telawa Games, Teotl Studios
- ESRB Rating: “E” for Everyone
- Genre: 2D Platformer
- Pros: Appealing aesthetic; cute robot; intuitive puzzles
- Cons: Easy; short; boring
- MSRP: $10
Unmechanical: Extended features a happy little flying robot
that is suddenly separated from its friends and trapped underground. The rest of the game has you guiding the
robot around to solve puzzles and open doors so that it can escape and get back
to its friends.
The actual gameplay in Unmechanical: Extended has you flying
the little robot around and solving puzzles.
Your only controls are movement with the left stick and pressing a
button to activate a sort of tractor beam to move objects around. That’s it.
The controls feel surprisingly great, though, and are nice and
responsive and never hinder what you need to do.
Where Unmechanical: Extended stumbles, however, is that the
puzzles it asks you to solve just aren’t very interesting. You’ll drop rocks onto switches to open
doors. You’ll drop rocks on scales to
weigh them down. You’ll drop rocks into
moving gears to stop them. You’ll use
the robot’s body to press buttons.
Later you might move mirrors with the tractor beam to guide laser beams
or have to move heavier metal beams.
Because your abilities are so limited, though, the puzzles
never really get all that complex or satisfying to solve. Unlike similar puzzle platformers, you never
get any new tools or abilities to use to freshen things up. The one change the game does eventually
introduce – the ability to go underwater – happens right before the end of the
game so it doesn’t really get the opportunity to really improve anything.
I’m not saying the game isn’t enjoyable to play or the
puzzles are bad, but nothing about the experience really jumps out at you as
being something special. It is just
easy and sort of boring and undeniably short as it only takes a couple of hours
to finish. It is wholly unremarkable.
The presentation definitely has an appeal, though. The little robot you control is cute and the
environments you explore are surprisingly neat looking. You fly through run down machinery and
industrial areas and it makes you think the world you’re playing in probably has
a more interesting story to tell than one about a simple lost robot but you
never get to see it. I rather like
that, to be honest.
All in all, though, Unmechanical: Extended just doesn’t have
enough depth in its gameplay to keep you interested for long. The puzzles are generally straightforward
and easy and not especially satisfying.
That isn’t to say Unmechanical: Extended is bad. Not at all, in fact. But compared to The Swapper or LIMBO or
INSIDE or other 2D puzzle platformers, it is mostly unremarkable. It isn’t a bad way to spend an afternoon,
but not the best way to spend $10 on an Xbox One indie game, either.
