It's tempting to launch into a "fans of the genre" preamble when it comes to Stretchmo, the latest in a series of block-pulling puzzle games for the 3DS. However, that would be selling it short. There's little risk that players who enjoyed Pushmo and Crashmo won't find more of the same appeal waiting for them here. Because it is "free-to-start," Stretchmo is even more approachable than either, making it a suitable starting point whether you have experience with the series or not.
"Free-to-start" is a wonderfully upfront term, but it doesn't suit any other game on the Nintendo 3DS eShop as well as it does Stretchmo. Let me clear something up right away: if you expect from Stretchmo a familiar free-to-play game structure with actions, timers, and assorted currencies that can be exchanged for one another, you will either be very disappointed or very relieved. The same can be said if you come to it after having played Pokemon Rumble World or Pokemon Shuffle, which were both released earlier this year under the same free-to-start banner. You are given access to seven tutorial levels in Stretchmo that explain the game's basic mechanics for free, but unlocking everything else requires a transaction. While you can happily spend hours plucking away at the content in Pokemon Rumble World and Pokemon Shuffle without paying a cent, Stretchmo is more like a supremely limited game demo by comparison--with only a few minutes of play time available, for that matter. You don't even have access to camera rotation in these early levels, a feature that becomes absolutely crucial in solving the more complicated puzzles that come later on. You can at least rewind, which comes in handy after accidentally (and inevitably) tumbling down from somewhere precarious.
These aren't necessarily bad things in this free-to-start venture. Stretchmo is much truer to the term "free-to-start" than some of the other games that share the descriptor, but expectations may need to be adjusted accordingly. Stretchmo is best thought of along the lines of the Picross e series--a relatively accessible puzzle game broken up into manageable chunks with even more manageable price tags attached to each one.
Pushmo, Crashmo, and Stretchmo (known in Europe as Pullblox, Fallblox, and Fullblox, respectively) are all about manipulating structures built from various Tetris-like blocks to reach a goal, and each game has changed the rules of this manipulation to stand on its own. As Stretchmo's name implies, the primary way of interacting with blocks is by stretching them from the front, back, or either side. A thoughtfully stretched block path allows you to climb up to the goal, whether it's a flag or a sickeningly cute little baby blob character that's been trapped. In the purchasable level packs, you're introduced to a variety of gadgets that have various effects when triggered; they may shoot a platform out, stretch a block in every direction, or provide you with a tunnel to get past an otherwise insurmountable obstacle. Most of these gadgets are drawn from previous games, and they add a little mechanical variety to keep things interesting.
As for the level packs, the game encourages you to complete them in order as they increase in difficulty, but because each pack starts with a refresher on some of the most basic Stretchmo strategies, there's no reason for a confident player not to stray. Whether or not you're a veteran of the series, however, you'll ultimately find twists that appeal to you. For example, while the Mallo's Playtime Plaza level pack is very simple and straightforward, in Corin's Fortress of Fun, the gadgets you encounter primarily release enemies who are used to climb to the goal and that can attack you and send you back to the start of the level. It's much more action-oriented than the other areas of the game, and it provides a good challenge, not to mention a good change of pace.
When you run out of puzzles, you always have the option to create a few levels of their own or scan QR codes to load user-made levels. The downside of this system can be finding those QR codes in the first place--especially if you don't feel like wading through Miiverse comment after Miiverse comment about Stretchmo's pricing to find them. The lack of an online level gallery certainly doesn't help, especially given the fact that the WiiU's Pushmo World had one. It's a firm step backward in a game otherwise full of small (but respectable) steps forward.
Stretchmo is as solid and endearing as the games that have come before it in the series; it's cute, colorful, and the perfect puzzle game to keep on your 3DS for dull commutes. It inherits all the best parts of Pushmo and Crashmo and bundles them up in a package (or rather, a series of packages) that is well suited to anyone, regardless of their series experience. Although it may not offer a groundbreaking change in the series, it distinguishes itself enough to be joyful in its own right.
This kind of material usually runs the risk of slipping into tired homages to Neuromancer seasoned with a dash of Blade Runner, but Technobabylon rejuvenates the formula by shifting the focus. Here, you spend much of your time in the guise of Doctor Regis, a member of the Central AI's police force that's sent out to handle all the things that need an actual body. He may have a penchant for covering monitoring cameras in his office, and he may dislike contemporary technology, but he's very much a part of the system. Still, the genre's tendencies toward loners and outsiders reveals itself here as well, although it's largely limited to Latha Sesame, who spends her sad days wired to a Matrix-like "Trance" while her crummy apartment and recycled paper clothes rot around her.
Bigs are rare enough that Technobabylon can safely poke fun at them elsewhere.
Much as in Game of Thrones, the story benefits from shifts in perspective between these and other characters. Knowing the truth about how a particular event played out, for instance, makes it all the more difficult to control the actions of a character who places the blame and motives elsewhere.
This is heavy stuff, and Technobabylon has the good sense not to take itself too seriously. The splashes of humor tend to appear in some of the game's toughest (or at least most time-consuming) puzzles, where they serve as a nice chaser to the frustration that comes with matching incorrect inventory items or not knowing what to do with that goo that's in your pocket. The script smartly recalls past secondary references and repurposes them for new and often humorous effects, and at one point, a character's grating silliness actually becomes a clue.
I should use this line with Comcast sometime.
As a result, Technobabylon feels like a real world, mixed with as much mirth as menace. Even the dystopia isn't as bleak as what you'll find in the likes of Shadowrun; for better or worse, it presents a generally believable picture of what life would be like toward the end of the century. True to the zeitgeist, Technobabylon even sneaks in exploratory conversations regarding sexuality and spirituality, but they're never heavy-handed or superfluous. Like so much of Technobabylon, it simply is. These elements come together to make the few choices encountered feel more meaningful, although the events reach the same basic outcomes regardless of the means it took to get there.
The game depicts these events so capably that I find myself half-forgetting that developer Wadjet Eye drenched the whole project in a pixelated aesthetic that seems better suited to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past than the futuristic landscape where the action takes place. The strong voice acting generally helps, as do the expressive conversation windows. (However, as a Texan, I laughed when two characters claimed they could recognize each others' Texas accents. Doctor Regis sounds more like Regis Philbin than anyone I've ever met in my neck of the brush.) It's a simple and increasingly outworn style, but there are stunning shots here nonetheless, such as when the camera rushes up the side of a skyscraper to peek through a hole in a shattered window. People and objects are well-crafted but just blurry enough to make the imagination do the right amount of legwork, and sound effects often pull the weight for what the visuals can't achieve.
Technobabylon sometimes shakes up the rhythm by making you pilot things remotely.
It's worth mentioning that, strictly speaking, Technobabylon isn't an entirely new game--its DNA reveals the vestiges of shorter freeware episodes released earlier in the decade. The art style has improved, however, and the mini-games from that era are mercifully gone, but the basic puzzling remains much the same, even if it serves different purposes for the new storyline. This is generally a good thing, as it's given Wadjet Eye the time to clean up cumbersome elements. Some of the associated problems with pointing and clicking remain, however, such as in a room where I had to grab a table's edges and pull it across the room. Minutes passed before I realized that something so simple as the table's edges existed, and then I had to endure the mildly tedious chore of searching for just the right pixels to grab them.
Fortunately, the puzzles themselves tend to find a sweet spot that delivers the right degree of challenge, and the character commentary that pops up when clicking on an item in your inventory or the world wisely makes up for the absence of a hint option. (Or, at least, I don't think there's one. It seemed like there might be hints in the developer commentary, but it repeatedly crashed the entire window every time Wadget Eye CEO Dave Gilbert finished his introduction.) While Technobabylon places a heavy emphasis on picking up objects and using them on something else, it never floods you with items. Many of the game's best ah-ha moments happen when you stop clicking on items in the world and play with matching items in your inventory, which suddenly opens solutions where there previously seemed to be none.
The doctor...is out.
That's not to say that I didn't get stuck. Quite the contrary--I can recall at least four incidents when I couldn't progress for an hour or more, but to the game's credit, it usually sprang from some mistake of my own. I once wasted 30 minutes thinking that I was supposed to throw a sheet over a camera, for instance, and (in a slightly more UI-blameworthy mistake), I didn't realize that a certain object wasn't working in my inventory because I hadn't right-clicked on it. Up until then, left-clicking had sufficed for inventory-related items.
Regardless, I consistently enjoyed Technobabylon. The puzzles are always meaningful, and the story proves that you can teach the aging dog of cyberpunk some new tricks. At times, I found myself genuinely surprised by story developments; at others, I marveled that it kept me smiling through rough patches when another game might have had me switching it off and playing Skyrim out of spite. And when a game can explore issues of sexuality and government surveillance while giving you a plausible reason to use a fishing pole at a crime scene, that's pretty all right.
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