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| | Gameplay
Sound
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Value
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| | Publisher: Toybox Games  Genre: Puzzle & Trivia | | | Min OS X: 10.2 |
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As noted before the game revolves around matching colored blocks to make columns disappear and lower Oubas safely to the ground. There are two ways to move the blocks, clicking and dragging the block in the direction of the block you wish to swap it with or by clicking your first block and then clicking the second block that will swap with it. In theory this may sound ideal but in application it leaves an unpolished and messy sheen to an otherwise playful game. For example, as you are quickly dragging your blocks and switching them, successfully creating matches, eventually the blocks will rise and your mouse will now be over a completely different block then the one you just recently wanted to move. Now because you had clicked that block the game thinks you want to move this new block. Before you know it you've moved your new block and for some odd reason you also moved the one you had wanted to move in the first place, but in the alternate direction. GAH! I think my head exploded. It’s a messy situation and becomes increasingly frustrating as you traverse through all one hundred levels. Oh yeah, I didn’t mention yet that there are 100 levels split up into ten different worlds each one requiring you to rescue all of the Oubas to repair some facet of their village. The difficulty and speed increase greatly as it should over the span of levels, but because it does the game almost seems unplayable. Coupling that with the fact that at times the speed and the time limit seem almost inconsistent with previous levels creates a feeling of unpleasantness in the pit of the stomach. The worst is yet to come as foretold by those rolling clouds. Things that will stop your journey dead in its tracks before you get very far at all. It’s true, bad things did happen, starting with the mother of all bugs, the lock up. At least once every time I, or my wife played this game it would freeze up and make us force quit. If this were a game that really tried your patience most of the time because of all the inconsistencies and bugs in it, it wouldn’t be that bad, but wait, it is one of those games. Having your game freeze up at least once a session did become quite a bothersome hindrance. That’s not all. Unfortunately, while playing the game mysterious things would happen to my blocks making me think that Garouba was doing things out of his power to screw with my game. But I’m going to take a stab and say it’s probably just faulty programming. Such as while Garouba is creating blocks to appear and shove the columns up another row you are able to see what colors these blocks would be so that you can plan and strategize accordingly. Sometimes though, that didn’t happen as you are just left with blank slates on the bottom leaving you clueless as to when the row will rise and what colors the blocks might be. Another mystery is the floating block. Occasionally, when swapping blocks, an obvious glitch occurs when the first block will slowly drift on top of the other block. All the while Garouba continues to make the columns ascend to his cages in the sky. It becomes a rather large annoyance when the swapping would have resulted in the matching of three or more blocks yet the Ouba gets caged because it didn’t feel like switching places. My job here is to review games and make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into if you decide to spend you hard earned dough on a game. In this case I would recommend against it until a patch is brought out to fix the gaping stability and gameplay issues with this obviously unfinished game. The graphics and sound are fine and they work to a point but once you start playing the game, unless you have the patience of a giant stone wall Ouba: The Great Journey will have quickly decided for you that spending your money to fund the Ouba’s journey was a bad idea when it decides to lock up for the night. Pros • Colorful, slick graphics
• Great presentation
• Thoughtful, challenging gameplay...Cons • ...If it didn't freeze at least once per session
• Click 'n' drag mechanics extremely buggy
• Sound effects become very tiresome
• Broken music player (and a week after the review has been written, still no contact from the developer about it)
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