Sometimes with a game, we wonder whether it’s the gameplay or the theme that came first. Did the developers latch onto a game-selling concept and then reverse-engineer some gameplay out of it? Or did they find a natty mechanic and then apply a theme on top? With Super Geisha Neon, we’re stumped. Because the theme and the gameplay don’t really line up at all. Perhaps there’s a Japanese folktale that we’re ignorant of, but Super Geisha Neon stuffs a lot into a blender and then forgets to push the ‘blend’ button. It’s a mash-up that just sits there, oddly disjointed.
Let us set this one up for you. In Super Geisha Neon, you play a Geisha who has run away from an evil shogun who wishes to force her into marriage. Understandable. But she’s out of her depth, and is lost in the neon streets of Japan. Luckily, she has the ability to talk to animals and befriends a mouse, and that mouse is able to remove obstacles from her path. Soon, she is talking to bats and spiders too, and the animal kingdom is coming to this Geisha’s aid.
We can sort of, kind of, imagine a narrative adventure with this plot – perhaps a 3D adventure game. But we didn’t imagine a puzzle-platformer. And we certainly didn’t imagine a box-pushing sokoban game. This is what we mean about not knowing whether Super Geisha Neon was conceived as gameplay or theme first. It’s a marriage of theme and gameplay that didn’t make sense to us.
So, each level starts with the Geisha in a level, aiming to reach a pagoda-like exit. But that pagoda won’t open until all of the apples are collected in the level (we assumed that this was some kind of rat-based bribe. Rats don’t work for free, you know). This task is complicated by the Geisha having limited abilities: she can’t jump particularly far, and she’s too big to crawl into smaller gaps.
This is where your mouse compadre becomes useful. With a tap of the Y button, you can shift to the mouse, and they can leap higher and crawl into those small gaps. But the mouse can’t push levers, and the Geisha has the helpful ability of being a stepladder for the mouse. You can jump onto her head and use it as a platform to reach other, higher, non-Geisha platforms. But while the two characters have independent uses, they must both be present at the pagoda for the level to progress.
It’s the Lost Vikings formula then: the old character-switcheroo where you need the right character in the right place at the right time to complete the puzzle. It’s nothing new, and the old archetypes are there: there’s the fast character who can reach the unreachable, and there’s the strong character who can push blocks and levers. With their powers combined, they can solve any puzzle that comes their way. HugePixel can dress the characters up as Geishas and mice all they want: this is a game that we’ve definitely experienced before.
The puzzles are never particularly challenging. It’s only at the halfway point, when the achievements have dried up, that you’re doing anything that approximates thinking. Often it’s about knowing which crate to push, and in what direction. Failure happens most often because you’ve left yourself stranded in a pit without a way out, or managed to remove the access to the exit. In that case, it’s a tap of LB and starting the level all over again. But we’d have enjoyed Super Geisha Neon so much more if we actually became stuck.
There is the odd hazard. Turrets start appearing, again at the halfway mark, and suddenly you are pulling off puzzling feats while missiles are being chucked at you. But Super Geisha Neon feels sorry for you and dials down the puzzle difficulty in tandem. Once you learn the rhythm of when turrets fire, moving only once they’ve done so, it becomes easy again.
Things pick up when Super Geisha Neon starts tinkering with its animals. The mouse gets swapped out for other animals, and those animals have different abilities. There’s the outline of a fantastic idea here: how can the crate-pushing and platforming antics bend and warp to accommodate new animals? But the spider, who is the most-used animal after the mouse, only really offers a new trampoline mechanic (the poor thing gets bounced on repeatedly), and is otherwise very mouse-like. It’s also a bit of a fiddle to use. It automatically switches to the Geisha once it’s turned into a trampoline, and we lost count of the number of times that we manually switched incorrectly.
The other animals turn up for glorified cameos. A bat feels like it’s about to turn Super Geisha Neon into a completely different game, but that completely different game is a bit arse and painfully slow. It’s almost a mercy that the bat disappears almost as quickly as it arrived. And there’s a final level and boss that both, again, hint towards a game that is happy to tinker with its formula but never truly does – at least not for long stretches.
We’re perhaps being overly harsh on Super Geisha Neon, because the formulaic puzzle-platforming is reasonably friction-free. There’s no challenge to be found, but it’s still enjoyable to go through the motions and drag your Geisha and mouse double-team to the exit. And while the levels are small, they are still clever, making strong use of the space that they have.
The reason we’re being harsh on Super Geisha Neon is that there are flashes of a better game. It never truly capitalises on its different animals and their associated rules. Some levels turn up with big ideas and then promptly disappear, never to return. And any game named Super Geisha Neon should have been more imaginative and unusual than your basic puzzle-platformer.
There’s potential bubbling beneath the surface here, but Super Geisha Neon never quite finds it. What’s left behind is a rather run-of-the-mill puzzler, and we were in the mood for so much more.
You can buy Super Geisha Neon from the Xbox Store
