PlayStation Basement #51 - Tsumu

This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on August 17th, 2019.

Hello, and welcome to PlayStation Basement! PlayStation Basement is a weekly review of an odd or obscure game for the original PlayStation. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral. Now, let’s go!

Continuing with another cute puzzle game after last week’s No One Can Stop Mr. Domino!, today I’m reviewing Tsumu. Tsumu was developed and produced by Hect in 1998. It was only released in Japan. Hect also worked on games such as Riot Stars, Square Deal, Formation Z, and Moon Crystal along with some shogi, pachinko, and baseball games. I don’t know much Japanese, so all I know is that Tsumu is a game about a hamster with forklift parts pushing televisions around to form pictures. It’s basically a 3D version of Boxxle. The word “tsumu” is the verb for stacking in Japanese, so that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise if you know the language. Those weird Tsum Tsum toys are named in a similar fashion. Anyway, let’s take a look at the cover art.

The cover art for Tsumu is cute but simple. There are three images of the main character breaking through boxes, lifting a box, and finishing a puzzle. It shows what the gameplay is like, but the background is just indigo. It’s sort of dull. Tsumu has nothing to hide at least.

The graphics look exactly like the cover art. Tsumu is kind of boxy beyond just being about boxes. The levels are grids, and the hamster is kind of boxy too. Unlike many PS1 games, there aren’t many textures here, and the levels lack any real details beyond what you need to play the game. There’s nothing particularly bad here, but it’s nothing amazing either.

Tsumu does a bit better sonically. The musick is really good, pop and jazz songs filling the box-pushing action of each stage. Unfortunately, the 50+ levels mean that the musick repeats quite a bit, and the tracks are not long before they repeat in play either. These are good tracks; I just wish there were more of them. The sound effects are nice and snappy. I really like the clicking sounds that occur when moving with a box lifted. Altogether, the sound design isn’t bad at all.

There’s not much to say about the gameplay of Tsumu. As I mentioned, this is a box-pushing game. Each puzzle requires the player to push the boxes in a particular way by moving the main character in a particular way. Sometimes, the order of operations will matter to get everything where it needs to go; boxes can only be lifted from one side, so you can’t always place them in their positions with other ones placed. The game also requires precise movement, as there is a limit to how many moves you get per stage. This movement limit means that Tsumu is hard. Seriously, this is a tough game, one of the toughest I’ve played. Despite looking cute and cuddly, Tsumu requires knowledge of each stage and exact movements to get through every puzzle. You can play any of the levels right from the beginning of the game, but I could barely finish any beyond the first few.

There are not many modes or options here either. Tsumu has the normal mode that I’ve described. There’s a free mode that removes the move limit (it’s still there for practice, but you don’t lose if you run out of moves). There’s also a tutorial mode of way easier puzzles that explains the different mechanics. It was helpful to learn about teleporters and to understand how to move about, many stages requiring backwards movements. I finished the tutorial, but the main game has me stumped.

I’m not really sure what I think about Tsumu. The game is simple but quickly ramps up in difficulty. You can always play the free mode if you’re suffering from move limits, but you’re always playing the same stages. There are a decent amount of levels here, and that’s all there is. Tsumu is about solving puzzles. That’s not really so bad either. I just wish there was some more variety in graphics, sound, or game mechanics to really push this into the right position.

Tsumu receives a Neutral.

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