Gabbchi is pretty cute and simple, but the puzzles aren’t. In Gabbuchi, you need to feed the titular character both blocks and food. Gabbuchi can change colour in order to eat the blocks that are the same colour as himself.
The colour-matching mechanic reminded me of Hue, but I actually found Gabbuchi much more challenging. While Hue focused on the platforming, this game has its sights firmly set on head-scratching puzzles (with a bit of platforming thrown in for good measure).
For each level, there’s a certain amount of blocks and food to eat before Gabbuchi’s satisfied. If you want that perfect result, you’ll also have to satisfy Gabbuchi while only changing colour a limited number of times.
The game starts with a cute tutorial before the main screen so I got straight into the action. This is all well and good, but I would have liked the language option to appear first as I don’t live in a monolingual household.
I blasted through the first world as I got to grips with the mechanics and thought the game was very easy at first, but I was dead wrong. That said, Gabbuchi does spend a lot of time with the one mechanic and it was getting a little repetitive before it added anything else.
Just when I was ready to play something else, the game added some new stuff. In later levels, you’ll get to gobble blocks while dealing with enemies, hidden blocks, spikes, and grabbing keys before you can finish the level. If you find yourself losing interest, stick with it!
The visuals convey exactly what they need to do and I can’t help but feel that I’d happily carry around a Gabbuchi Tamagotchi with me all day.
The music is cute and jaunty, but it can get repetitive. If you’ve been stuck on a single level for ages and it starts to sound less cute and more like childish mocking.
There’s also a level editor if you’re into that kind of thing. Personally, I’m absolutely rubbish at that kind of stuff, though I would like to play some user-created content to expand the game’s longevity.
Thanks to its simplicity, Gabbuchi makes even the most the difficult challenges sound easy. After all, you just have to eat some blocks and do it without changing colours more than a certain number of times.
While I’m not usually interested in platinum trophies, 100% completion, or anything like that, I felt that I had to fully complete every one of the 180 levels in this game.
In short, Gabbuchi starts off easy, ramps up the difficulty, and somehow makes it all look like it’s going to be so simple. For me, that’s what makes a perfect puzzler and it’s one
For full disclosure, I got my copy of Gabbuchi thanks to #indieselect (definitely check it out!), but I’m not actually obliged to say anything nice about it.
Indie Bandits 