Playground of Puzzles--Supraland Review

Summer has arrived and with it another seasonal Steam sale designed to lighten our wallets and reduce the size of our wishlists.  Until the current pandemic trapped me inside, I hadn't done much mass purchasing in Steam sales, but now that I'm primarily indoors for the duration, I decided to fully immerse myself into eliminating entries on my wishlist.  I feel like I've spent a bit too much on games recently, but hey, you gotta have something to do when you're generally avoiding leaving the house.  So what exactly did I purchase and have I played?  I decided to stick with moderately to lower-priced entries and decided not to go with any more recent games (Doom Eternal was 50% off....and I do love punching demons).  I picked up Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3, Prey (it was $8, which is a bargain), Dicey Dungeons, Supraland, and Hades.  Thanks to the sale, all five games ran me about $40 (with a $5 off coupon...it's not quite as good as Epic's $10 off, but I'll take it).  I've been intermittently playing four of the five games and have found that it's an interesting mix.

In Supraland you play as a red plastic toy.

The first game from my sale purchases that I decided to check out was Supraland.  In Supraland you play as a red, plastic toy who is part of an active community that exists within the sandbox of a child.  This might sound a bit underwhelming, but in fact there's an entire functioning toy society within the world of the fictional sandbox.  The story starts with the discovery by your father (the red king) that the other denizens of the sandbox world, the blue plastic figurines, have shut off the water to the red town!  He assigns you to seek out the blue king and figure out why they have shut off the water and threatened the livelihood of the red settlement--he hands you your fist weapon, a wooden sword, and sends you on your way to the blue kingdom.  Unfortunately, reaching the blue kingdom is no easy task and the path is blocked by numerous puzzles and obstacles that require the discovery and use of special gear.  Your journey takes you to the far flung reaches of the sandbox world and requires puzzle solving mettle.

My playtime stats/info--I played through the main storyline and basically discovered what I could in the general vicinity of the story missions.  I did some side exploring, but definitely didn't get close to unlocking everything or finding every hidden object/chest.  I finished up the main story in 16 hours.  There are still tons of things to find, but so far I haven't felt any real calling to go back and find them.

Pros:

+ The sandbox and toys setting is fun and unique.  The dev (which, I think was just one person) has created a really fun little world in an unconventional game setting.  The puzzles are centered around objects you would expect to find in an actual sandbox--building bricks, tools, etc.

+ Puzzles are the right balance of difficulty and require you to figure out the best way to use the numerous tools that you discover.  Most of them are solvable through experimentation, but there are a few that stumped me (I looked up a couple).  The mechanic to solve the puzzles are fun to figure out--creating colored key cards by changing paint colors or using special beams to guide hungry bugs to eat things--very unique.

+ Lots of hidden powerups and collectibles.  There are numerous chests hidden throughout the game world--some are in plain sight but might require finding special gear to reach and others are tucked away in the multitude of hidden nooks and crannies of the sandbox world.  You could spend hours and hours trying to find them all.

+A bit of light humor sprinkled throughout.  There are numerous Easter Eggs that relate to other nerdy movies/games scattered about as collectibles--occasionally you will stumble across a dead, plastic figurine that looks a bit familiar...like famous characters from other franchises (thanks to copyright laws these characters are just similar but have different names).  You can collect their hair/hats (I hadn't figured out if you could wear them in some form, but it's first person so you couldn't see it anyway).

+ Lots of tools to collect and help you traverse the sandbox obstacles.  There is a special beam that can be used 1.) pull you up onto objects, 2.) swing between objects, or 3.) create a sort of laser pathway that you can walk across; a special magnetic belt that can be used to pull you up metallic objects; and stomp shoes that can stomp enemies or special stomp pads connected to puzzle parts and, of course the handy, dandy force cube.  Part of the fun is discovering a new tool and travelling to previous areas to find hidden objects and areas that were previously inaccessible.

+ Kid friendly.  It's a cute story that's mostly about solving puzzles.  There is violence (you fight enemies) but it's not graphic.  It would be a good choice for older kids who won't get overly frustrated by the puzzles.

+ Ran really well.  No crashes, saved fine, no problems.

Cons:

- Combat isn't great.  There are enemies scattered throughout the world and they respawn so you'll find yourself killing them a lot.  You have access to a sword for melee and a beam weapon for ranged attacks.  There are a couple of boss style fights that are partially puzzle based but also have an element of combat.  Mostly you just attack as fast as you can or use your beam weapon with its combo attack to blast enemies.

- Game world is large but there's no map.  I wish the game had some sort of map so that you could know which areas you haven't reached.  There are ways to quickly travel between areas (special jump pads that you can power up) but you have to sort of remember how you got somewhere or where it was located.  Eventually you find a sort of "chest locator" tool that emits a beep when you're close to a chest, but it's not terribly helpful.

Recommendation:

Supraland is a cute puzzler/adventure game that frequently appears on sale (in fact, it's on sale right now--at the time of this post--for $8.99).  It's definitely worth the sale price and is a family/kid friendly game.  I enjoyed solving the puzzles, the light humor, and the unique sandbox world that have been created by this solo dev.  A new DLC was just recently released, so if you enjoy the base game, consider purchasing the new content (I haven't played it).  The trailer is below if you want to see a sample of gameplay.