Parental Punishment or Platforming Purgatory?
Popotinho’s Adventures tells the story of a young lad who sets out to reunite with his parents after they dole out quite an old fashioned punishment for his bad behaviour. Total abandonment. That’s right, they’ve had enough and head off in the hope of teaching the egg shaped menace a lesson. It’s not a method we can approve of here, but it does set Popotinho up neatly for his own escapades.
Popotinho’s Adventures is an old school platformer in every sense. Visually the devs have played it safe with the reliable pixel art style and honestly it’s not particularly pretty. However, it does the job and overall the soundtrack is actually pretty catchy.
Retro Repetition
The aim of the game is to jump and dodge your way to the finish trophy to exit the level. Popotinho can take three hits before he’s toast, and starts off with three lives. There is plenty of fruit to collect along the way, and when you gather 100 pieces you will earn an extra life. However, if you lose all your lives and hit the game over screen, your punishment will be to start from the beginning of the current level. Barring checkpoints mid-level, this is the same as when you lose a life which makes collecting fruit and having lives in the first place feel absolutely pointless. That said, I still couldn’t help myself from collecting every piece of fruit I could find.
Popotinho can defend himself in the form of jumping on top of enemies to take them out (even the rock monsters), but sometimes he will take damage despite swearing you hit them on the sweet spot. Oh and the bees can pass through solid matter which is… odd.
The young lad can also double jump but in practice this makes things too easy, removing a fair bit of challenge from the levels. There’s one where you need to use a springboard to jump over spikes and the fact you can jump again means you simply breeze through the level and barely need to think; it’s almost like the devs missed this when designing it. There is also an invisible wall at the top of the screen which is frustrating as it might catch you out when platforming high up, pushing you down and probably costing you a life or two.
Overall, the controls in Popotinho’s Adventures are actually quite sensitive and it’s tricky to act with precision. If you’re standing on the edge of a platform, for example, Popotinho will automatically slide off. I came a cropper a few times and dropped into a chasm because the jump command wouldn’t register in time. There’s definitely a time lag here.
Endless Expanse: Popotinho’s Repetitive Levels
Popotinho’s Adventures consists of 50 levels which is actually longer than is typical with these types of games, although they are very repetitive and come with little variety. It’s curious too, as towards the end of each biome the levels tend to get shorter and simpler, as if the devs had run out of ideas and were working to fill the quota of levels.
It’s not often I say this but 50 levels is probably too many, all due to the limited variety of level design that is spread very thinly here. There are different biomes you’ll visit but tellingly they feature exactly the same enemies over and over, which just feels plain lazy. In fairness every now and then a new mechanic will be introduced such as a springboard or falling block, but they are extremely familiar to platformer players and far too few and far between. This is the fundamental problem with Popotinho’s Adventures.
Achievement Avalanche
Players can rejoice however as the standard achievements structure for these little platformers is present and correct here. I would argue there should only be 1000G available, as the “bonus level” achievements that are given out for completing the regular levels serve almost as an excuse to make up the total to 2000G.
It would be great to mix it up with some different achievements, perhaps with a combo of three enemy kills for example. At least this would have been something different.
A Forgettable Platformer with Limited Appeal
Popotinho’s Adventures is a distinctly average platformer which pulls on a meagre amount of tired and tested ideas from the genre, resulting in a surprisingly lengthy but otherwise disappointing experience.
Your Links
A Mischievous Journey Awaits in Popotinho’s Adventures – https://www.thexboxhub.com/a-mischievous-journey-awaits-in-popotinhos-adventures/
Buy Popotinho’s Adventures on Xbox – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/popotinhos-adventures/9pmd7gfkbbzz
