Tumblestone Review

Tumblestone; as announced by its developer “is the first original action-puzzle game of the past fifteen years”. I can’t argue against that. So you might feel this looks like any typical match three puzzler; it is not. Tumblestone has a method to its solutions needing you to focus and plan ahead as any wrong move can have you resorting to a restart.

Usually here I’ll speak about story and with a puzzle game you wouldn’t expect that; not in Tumblestone. There is a story a weird and wacky one at that with you taking on different characters in different worlds with the story effecting the way the game is actually played. The story while simple and very much practical can deliver some laughs and sometimes not, however it does provide you with content; 12 world with 30 puzzles each coming up to a whopping 350+ puzzles. You can’t say there isn’t enough value.

Tumblestone is all about gameplay as every “Action-puzzle” game should be. With that solidly planted in mind it’s time to explain the way it words, it is match 3 but here it isn’t just random luck; you must take your time and thinking of your future moves. Since if you don’t have the next move planned already you may pull the wrong stone and then be eternally stuck and then you must restart. This WILL get frustrating but it has the same feeling behind the Souls games, you made the mistake; you failed but if you are focused and look at the whole picture and are prepared you WILL succeed. It is very rewarding when you do complete a tough puzzle and that feeling just drives you to continue again and again.

Tumblestone doesn’t just have a story mode it includes an Arcade mode, Marathon, Heartbeat and InfiniPuzzle modes and offline bots for when you want a quick game but have no friends. With InfiniPuzzle the game produces an infinite puzzle that just goes on and on and on until you make too many mistakes and basically lose. Heartbeat consists of the puzzle blocks slowly moving down with the player having to solve them as fast as possible to stay alive otherwise you get crushed under the blocks. Marathon is weird there is a glass panel and you have to just pull down all the blocks as they appear and with more appearing, I didn’t play this much though.

Tumblestone isn’t only a single player game. The game comes with a full multiplayer aspect with both Local and Online modes. Local versus allows you to play against 3 of your friends and thanks to “Party Mode” you can actually use all unlockables without having to unlock them through the game allowing you to have more content for you and your friends to play through. In multiplayer you can use modifiers that are found in single player also to try and spice the game up but the real fun for me had to have been in the “same puzzle” mode where you and your friends would be doing the same puzzle and it would be a battle to see who can decipher and solve the puzzle the fastest and can lead to some tears for sore losers. Online multiplayer is pretty much the same but I did not spend more than a couple of games on there just to test its functionality which was fine.

Overall Tumblestone is one of the few puzzle games that I feel is worth buying. It provides you with hundreds and hundreds of hours of puzzle filled fun and there isn’t much you can fault it on in that aspect. The multiplayer is fantastic and can be really enjoyable with a group of friends and if that’s something you like doing this is something you should buy. I would highly recommend it to anyone who has a penchant for puzzle games.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Sony Playstation 4 code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.