At first glance Stranger Things: Puzzle Tales is just another match-stuff RPG. It’s got the Stranger Things window-dressing, but it never quite captures the things that made the Netflix series so great. And then you enter your first portal, and …
At first glance Stranger Things: Puzzle Tales is just another match-stuff RPG. It’s got the Stranger Things window-dressing, but it never quite captures the things that made the Netflix series so great. And then you enter your first portal, and the game twists into something a little bit different.
The basics here are going to be familiar to anyone who’s played the likes of Puzzle Quest. You’ve got a bunch of characters represented by different colored shapes – in this case, dice – and you’re fighting against monsters at the top of the screen. Matches hurt the monsters and power up your special moves.
Different colors are stronger or weaker against others, and different characters have different kinds of special moves. Some can heal, others attack specific enemies or send out waves of damage that affect everything they touch.
You’ll battle through a few waves per level, gain some coins and XP and upgrade your characters, then do the same thing again. There’s a gacha mechanic that lets you draw new characters into your team using a radio as well. So far, so standard.
And then the first portal happens, and something special occurs. The game drops in some roguelite elements – your HP and energy roll over to the next fight, you unlock different boosts and buffs between fights, you can choose which direction to head and you can even add powerful characters to your roster for the duration of the portal. It’s not super deep, but it’s deep enough that suddenly things are pretty interesting.
Those portals are only open once a day, which is a bit of a shame, because they showcase how average the rest of the experience is. It’s fun making matches and killing monsters, but it’s engaging making choices and powering up your team interesting ways while you’re doing it.
Stranger Things: Puzzle Tales has some nice ideas, but it doesn’t always let them come to the fore, and that’s a shame. It’s worth checking out, even though it doesn’t do as much as it could with its license or its best bits.
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