We’ve all been there; having poured yourself a fresh glass of water, you’ve dropped the glass on the floor and witnessed the mess which soon ensues. Imagine you could control the water and guide it through the cracks in the floor while avoiding all the hazardous glass. While this isn’t a possibility in real life, similar situations arise in the latest release on the PS4 and PS Vita with Puddle.
Puddle is a platformer which sees you playing as various liquid-based substances as you make your way through various predicaments and try to maintain as much of the original liquid as possible. With the game already being available on numerous platforms, I take a look at some of the changes which have made their way over to the PS4 and PS Vita versions.
Of the mentioned changes to the original version, the feature which peaked my interest the most was the touch pad functionality as it’s an option which we haven’t seen much use of in many PS4 games. The basic control system sees you using L2 and R2 to move the liquids left and right as you make your way through tunnels, gardens and science labs. This is as difficult as the controls get as you only require to move the liquid left and right which makes the game easily accessible to everyone. As well as the standard controls, you are also able to use the DualShock 4’s motion sensor controls where you can tilt the pad to the left or the right. This works fine, but it feels far more secure to use the buttons as you can control when to make the liquid go side-to-side rather than guess when the controller is flat or to one side.
Onto the ‘pièce de résistance’ with the touch pad controls. To say they were a major letdown would be an understatement. The ability to touch either side of the pad to move the liquid side-to-side feels detached and almost like you have no control over your precious water or coffee. I do think that there will be games which benefit from the controller’s function, but this isn’t one of them sadly.
With the controls easy to learn, the physics of the liquids feels very realistic and educational to a certain extent. The reason I mention educational is because apart from the standard water and coffee you play with in the beginning, you soon have the likes of Nitro-glycerine and oil to play with and each liquid reacts differently to hazards along its route. In the laboratory levels, Nitro-glycerine reacts to various sections of the environments meaning that hazards may not always be obvious. The gradual build-up of the difficulty is well paced and increases the difficulty at the right time, in my opinion anyway. There are 8 chapters in total and within those chapters there are 6 levels so there is definitely a lot of depth in the game (no pun intended).
The various chapters change the background and setting to various degrees. One moment you are witnessing water flowing around plant life, seeing oil leaping around a laboratory and even passing liquid through a human body. The music is also wonderful and suits the tone of the game perfectly. There is so much to see in each of these levels that you may find yourself replaying them just to see everything that is happening. As well as this offering great replay value, there are leaderboards which sees you attempting to get through the levels as fast as you can with as much liquid as possible.
Though one of the flaws I found in Puddle was that there isn’t much variance in the gameplay. While it is fun and looks great, the simple gameplay is good for ten minutes or so, but playing Puddle for a substantial amount of time can be quite dull. It’s no wonder that the game has been released on mobile devices as it seems like the perfect game you would play if you had 10 minutes to spare or commuting. Having put time aside to play Puddle, I found the game’s simple controls almost feel like there was no progression even though the difficulty was being increased and I knew the game was getting harder. I just felt as though something else could have been added in as a reward for reaching a certain level rather than the same gameplay throughout.
As a game which has already been released on Wii U, Xbox 360, PC and mobile devices, it’s almost as if Puddle has been released on the PS4 and PS Vita to try and take advantage of the new technology which these consoles offer. In my experience, it doesn’t seem as though the PS4’s touch pad has added anything to the experience. That being said, Puddle is still good fun to play and can be played by anyone. It looks pretty and has a great soundtrack, but I don’t think this is quite the game to mark the arrival of unmissable indie games coming to the PS4.
Puddle is available on the PS4 and PS Vita now and is cross-buy compatible for £5.99.