Piyotama Review (PSP)

     I'm dreading writing this review. I might have to put this game in the bad category, which would be upsetting, the first game I've done that with. We'll see. Keep in mind that this review is for the PSP version of the game. The PS3 version may have more features that would affect the score.

     Piyotama is a puzzle game. I was even in the mood for a puzzle game when I played it. Even so, after about 7 rounds of play, I'm done with it. The first was confusing. The 2^nd through 5^th round were entertaining. The last two were boring.

     I like some puzzle games a lot too. I love Lumines. I had a bitter high score rivalry with my brother in the original. I ultimately lost, but I'm convinced I could beat his high score if I wanted to put in the effort. I had a brief flirtation with Hexic HD that I enjoyed. And I played a huge amount of the truly remarkable Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, one of my favorite PSP games ever.

     So let me describe Piyotama to you briefly. It's set up kinda like Tetris. There are a bunch of eggs all in stacks. More drop in from the top from time to time. You control a cursor that highlights a row of eggs. You can press left or right to move out three eggs from the left-most or right-most section of the rows. Those three eggs stay with your cursor, so you can move them to other rows by pressing up and down and then left or right to put them back in while taking three others out from the other side. Matching up four or more in a row of the same color highlights them, meaning they will hatch. Hatching occurs at set points, or you can speed it up by pressing R or L, although this gives you less points. You can also switch around the order of the three eggs that are outside of the rows with your cursor by pressing cross or circle. One cool feature is that once an egg is highlighted to be hatched, it stays highlighted, even if you move it out of its group of four. This means you can go and grab every egg of one color and plug them all into the same spot on top of three other eggs in turn, and they will all hatch even though they end up all over the board. There are special rare eggs that hatch all eggs of the same color, eggs that lock rows so you can't move them, and eggs that are worth extra points. Also, I should point out that the columns are diagonal only, eggs are staggered, not directly on top of each other. There is a mode that gives you 300 seconds of play, and a mode that stops when the eggs reach the top of the screen like Tetris.

     Does that make sense? I hope so. If this was a better game I would try to explain it a little more clearly. I didn't like it because it's really random. You will get tons of matches accidentally as you move eggs around. I thought that might be cool at first, but it turns out it's not. It makes you feel like you don't know what you're doing; kind of the opposite of what I want to feel while playing a puzzle game. Or any game, really; it makes the game feel like it is playing itself without your input. There also just isn't any depth or hook that I could find. It's a bit different, but also basic. While I like the mechanic of keeping eggs highlighted so that they will hatch even if you move them out of their grouping, nothing else was doing anything for me.

     The art style is decent; cutesy chickens, I guess you could say. There are a few skins you can download for free that change the background and dress up the mama chicken. They are beach and holiday themes. It's cool how when the eggs hatch, cute little chickens fly out and hang around on the side of the screen.

     The music is about half cute, half grating.

     I've seen positive reviews of this game praising its price. I guess it costs like $2. Totally irrelevant since it isn't fun after a few sessions. Games should only get praised for being cheap if they are good. I got this for free; what good does that do me if I'm not going to play it anymore?

     I don't regret the few play sessions I had with Piyotama, I'm just not going to play it anymore. I need to show that it is quite a few steps worse than some of the games I've put in the mediocre tier. I'm going to give it a Bad Game, Tier 1 rating. I feel mean, but it wouldn't be fair to sugar coat my honest opinion. I'm sure people worked hard on this, and I respect that. It just wasn't very fun to me.