DeVuego LATAM

As someone who loves fairy tales and has sunk quite a few hours into creative puzzle games like Scribblenauts, I was delighted by the prospect of playing Storyteller. Unfortunately, the experience was underwhelming. While its concept is interesting, the game ultimately feels confined--held back by simple puzzles and its lack of creative freedom.

It's disappointing that Blue Fire is unquestionably fun to move around in but is hampered by design decisions that hold back its free-form platforming. It's difficult to experiment with the reaches of your agility when it's so easy to lose large swathes of progress due to a misstep, a punishment that permeates not only exploration but the otherwise expertly designed platforming side challenges. Its economy relies too heavily on one in-game currency and unnecessarily blocks progression, making it feel like Blue Fire isn't respectful of your time. You'd have to really fall in love with Blue Fire's one well-tuned mechanic to make its entire adventure feel worthwhile.

Together, Make and Break showcase the strengths and weaknesses of Rock of Ages 3 overall. At its best, it's a thrilling and often hilarious ride through an imaginative and surreal landscape. At its worst, its formula is too rigid, its challenges too rote, and it can feel like your frustration with its idiosyncrasies could boil over at any moment. Thankfully, in such times, the bite-size structure comes to the rescue, and you can roll into something new.

Mulaka is a simple game at heart with a lot of familiar traits. The open, low-poly landscapes and characters are reminiscent of Journey. The combat and puzzle elements are similar to Breath of the Wild and Okami. But thanks to the specific Tarahumara setting and characters, Mulaka still manages to have a personality and feel all its own. It offers an appealingly unique setting that makes it something more than a typical adventure game.