I’m always a bit dubious when a piece of software has the “edutainment” label attached to it. To me, if you’re learning, you’re learning, and if you are playing, you ain’t learning.
However, almost despite myself, the subject of today’s review has managed to teach me a couple of things. You see, the game in question, Glitch Hero coming from Didactoons and Artax Games, sees us having to use logic and coding tools to solve puzzles. Can this mashup of school and gaming still be fun, or are we going to be wishing we had extra detention instead?
The story of the game seems like a good place to start, so here we go. We play as ADA, daughter of a computer scientist, and one day we decide to go to see what our dad does all day at work. When we arrive, our father and his two colleagues appear to be non responsive, hooked up to a kind of virtual reality device. Wondering how we can help, we end up entering Codeland, the world that our father had created. However, everything isn’t happy, and glitches have crept into the world. Can Ada, with the assistance of Omega, a sardonic bunny, fix the world and save all the people? Well, that’s up to you and your logical fingers…
Glitch Hero comes across in a very nice, child-friendly kind of way. The graphics are bold and vivid, and while there isn’t anything here that is going to make the most powerful of Xbox consoles break a sweat, what there is to see is nice and shiny. The action is presented from a kind of top down three quarter perspective and while this makes the combat a bit tricky, you can adjust to it. The design of the enemies and the NPCs that you meet is all really well done, and Ada herself looks pretty cute too.
So, everything is fine with the way the game looks. What about the sound? Well, there is no dialogue, and instead the story plays out in the form of text windows. The other sounds, the music and the battle eleents are all very nice and work well, and so the presentation can have a tick next to it.
But the big question centres on how Glitch Hero plays. There is no doubt that this is a game that is squarely aimed at kids and even the difficulty settings play to that. When you start a game, they are actually related to the age of the players – easy for under 10’s, medium caters for those from the ages of 10-12 and so on. I obviously channeled my inner 12 year old…
The first aspect to concern ourselves with is the basic exploring and fighting part of the game. When we catch up with Omega, he gives us things to do, and also a weapon called the hammer.exe, which takes the form of, you’ve guessed it, a hammer! From there, defeating enemies and smashing things in the environment will reward us with bits, the currency in the game. These bits can be traded with an NPC to upgrade Ada’s skills, making the hammer more powerful, for example. Keeping Ada’s skills upgraded is the key to winning battles later on.
Actual combat with the hammer is a bit hit and miss, if you’ll pardon the pun, and the perspective makes things tricky. The same thing also applies to the traversal as Ada whizzes about the place. There is no jump as such in Glitch Hero and instead Ada has a glitch dash move that can be used to avoid damage and also to cross small gaps. The problem comes when the “platforming” sections of the game rear their head, as it is all too easy to dash too far and fall off the map. Other than this, looking about is pretty good fun, especially when you adapt to the viewpoint.
The second part of the game is that of the educational aspect. Weirdly, it is pretty good fun. As we progress through the game, we come across areas in which puzzles need solving, all in order to, say, open a door. These are logic based puzzles, requiring planning and execution of a series of moves to achieve a result. They start off easy, with unlimited steps, for instance, and directions to turn and so on. As we get deeper into the game, the hammer comes into its own, as does a glitch bolt, another upgrade, to trigger switches. Moving to the next level, we have to make use of loops, allowing us to use a limited number of abilities to make a series of things happen, and then move on via statements and so on and so forth.
These puzzles are never overly taxing (12 years old, remember?) but they do require you to think in a certain way, and apparently this can help teach the basics of coding. If only they had the subject this way when I was at University!
You should have a good deal of fun with Glitch Hero. It isn’t perfect by any means, but the puzzles marry up well with the rest of the gameplay and so the end result is enjoyable. If you have a child you need to entertain, this may well be a good fit, but older gamers should be aware that it may come across as a bit basic.
Glitch Hero: A Coding Adventure with a Dash of Action and a Whole Lot of Heart – https://www.thexboxhub.com/glitch-hero-a-coding-adventure-with-a-dash-of-action-and-a-whole-lot-of-heart/
Buy Glitch Hero on Xbox – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/glitch-hero/9MZ2TB1NHKZC/
