978th played so far
Genre: Puzzle
Platform: iPhone/Playstation 3
Year of Release: 2008
Developer: Capybara Games
Publisher: Disney Interactive Studios/Starwave
At this point, a lot of block puzzles revolve as much around how you theme it as it does about the gameplay itself. While we’ve seen a bunch of variations on the theme, premium versions of the game take more time to defend why you’re doing this. For Critter Crunch, this appears to be a big fuzzy creature hungry for some set of bugs that we’re going to have to make happy.
Our Thoughts
The idea behind Critter Crunch is that groups of critters slowly move down from above. You need to feed smaller critters to larger critters in appropriate size increments, with them exploding once they eat two of the smaller ones.ย It’s simple enough, but with a few different colours per size and those working together to create combos – creatures linked to the one that explodes with the same colour come along and they chain together from there. As it speeds up, it does get hectic, especially as you can sometimes run out of room to temporarily park your creatures as you try to set up bigger combos, more obnoxious when you figure out you can’t get rid of the bigger sizes without getting to and sacrificing smaller ones.
What really makes the game one you can enjoy for a long time is the amount of content. The regular levels build up putting in additional power-ups and hazards that develop slowly, while the number of columns can change a lot. Soon after, though, you also unlock various other puzzle levels – no new creatures, just destroy them all with what you have – and time-based challenge levels. There are a lot of them and I felt I had a good chance to get lost in them as I did so.
Final Thoughts
Critter Crunch is a block puzzle game where the presentation adds that bit of definition to the rules of the game, the absorption mechanic feeling clearly defined by the way they look – all pieces fit in the same square, but bigger ones do feel bulkier. There’s a lot of specific content in here beyond just playing the game, something that clearly pays off in keeping you occupied with the game.