Introduction
Supraland is a first person puzzle game that was developed by the indie studio Supra Games. It was self published to PC in 2018 and left early access in 2019. Publisher Humble Games brought it to consoles in October 2020.
Review
They say a child’s imagination is the best thing on earth. What a child can bring to life with nothing but a string and a pebble is miraculous. So when a child has a whole sandbox, and a huge imagination, the possibilities are endless! The world is detailed and huge when you’re in the eyes of a toy that’s now placed in this sandbox, and that’s how our adventure starts!
You wake up as a red guy, in a nice little house in the Red Village, and are immediately asked to jump down a hole to see why the town has no water. So away you go only to eventually find the blue guys destroying the water pipe that feeds into your town. So you’re told to go to the Blue Village to find out why this happened. That is the basis of the story and that’s about all there is to it. It doesn’t really go any deeper than that in all honesty. There’s no development, there’s about one cutscene, the only dialogue you really see is by interacting with NPCs that roam around the area. There’s just no motivation whatsoever for the journey.
What I thought was going to be a fun little action game turned out to be a deep deep puzzler with annoying combat if I’m being honest. So first we’ll start with the big bulk of the game. Puzzles. There are puzzles everywhere you go. It’s how you advance, how you get upgrades, how you find secrets. There’s also some platforming to do as you progress through the areas and get through the puzzles, but this was floaty and when I needed to be super precise I more often failed than not.
The puzzles are also all environmental for the most part, and there’s some NPCs in the area that may help you, but usually it’s so cryptic it doesn’t help in the long run. There’s no hints, no spot on a map to help you, heck there is no map! In the pause menu it says “if you need help, look at the objective, talk to NPCs, or follow the wires”. What does that mean!? Well it means, every time I got to a new area, I wasn’t excited, but more annoyed at what kind of puzzles I may end up encountering. Near the end of the game, there was a puzzle mechanic that I never had to use before, and I happened to stumble upon it by a rage induced happenstance!
The combat is the next annoying part of the game. Not only is there a small amount of enemies in the game, sometimes just hordes upon hordes of enemies would spawn and then I’d have to deal with them unfortunately instead of just hightailing it out of there. This wouldn’t be an issue if the combat was fun. Three of the fiveish enemy types can kill you so fast it’s not even funny, and the melee attack in the game puts you in such close range to an enemy that you would just end up getting killed almost immediately anyways! No matter how many upgrades you have to your damage or not. It was irritating. Heck I had to cheese a boss fight because the bosses attacks hit me no matter what I did and I would die so fast!
Now if there’s one thing I did love about the game, it was the aesteth. The colour and design of the world was fantastic. It was amazingly created with the mind of a child behind it all. It was bright, vibrant, and silly. It had a whole lot of pop culture references behind it too! From Walter White, to Goku, to Indiana Jones. Anytime I found these Easter Eggs, I always at least let out a giggle, and that’s what I truly wanted more of. Giggles and a silly world, but I’m sad I didn’t get that, I truly am.
Rating
Pros:
- Well Crafted World
- Tons Of Secrets
Cons:
- Next To No Story
- No Map
- Puzzles & Mechanics Can Be So Vague Because Nothing Is Explained
Summary
I had high hopes for this game. It looked silly and fun, but with mechanics that are barely explained, vague hints, and no map for such a large world, it’s hard to recommend this. I’m all for a good puzzle, but at least give me something when doing them. But I will say, I did them all without looking up any solutions! So go me!
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Game & Developer Information
Developer Website: Supra Games
Developer Socials: Twitter
Publisher Website: Humble Games
Publisher Socials: Twitter
PSN Store Links: £15.99/€19.99 Europe / $19.99 North America
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