Little Adventure, Gameplay In Pablo
Pablo ($0.99) by PSI Studio tries to be an epic fantasy game, but falls short.
Little is revealed about the story, other than that it takes place in a “fantasy” world, and the guy’s name is Pablo. What is he trying to do? Make it to the end of the level, I guess. Why? I don’t know, maybe to get to the other side?
The game starts off acclimating you to the controls. A left and right control are on the left side of the screen, while four buttons on the right control jumping, down slashing, side slashing, and ducking.
Each button is blue, with a picture of Pablo that indicates each move. For the beginning, though, you only need left, right, and jump.
Apparently he has a jetpack because after jumping he can gain lift if you keep your finger on the jump button. At least, I assume he has a jetpack. though who knows?
Aside from revealing little about the story, there is also little in regards to adventure. As far as we’re shown, Pablo is the only guy around. He’ll pass a couple of cottages as he runs from platform to platform, though nobody’s home. Worse yet, there aren’t any bad guys around, either.
The game’s directions are sparse as well. With the game being on different platforms, like Windows, OS X, iOS, and Android, the developers felt it necessary to show the controls for all of them. When you finally get to iOS (at the bottom), you’re shown keyboard shortcuts. “Oh cool,” I thought, “You can use the keyboard to play.”
After reading the directions, the app crashed. I took the lapse as a chance to connect my wireless keyboard and see how I fared with the keyboard controls. Didn’t work.
This game suffers from a number of issues most of which seem to stem back to lack of planning. While the graphics look nice, that’s not why people play games. People play them for escapism.
Who wants to escape to a world void of everything except some weird dude who can fight, but doesn’t have any weapons? At least he has a jetpack (possibly).
