Packet Queen #

I bring a sort of 'one same' vibe to my packets that my 'pentacle' opponents dont really like What a quaint little puzzle game! Packet Queen with a hashtag on the end for some reason is a super addictive puzzler about combining two extremely simple games into one Basically, there are 7 colours and 5 shapes in the game, and they slide from left to right. There is one colour the fairy on the left wants, and all other colours should be discarded by holding up or down. Super easy, right? That's where the poker comes in. By sending them down, you add the shapes to your hand. In typical poker fashion, the more aesthetic your hand, the more it'll probably score. Combined with a mechanic that rewards making the same hand over and over, and making a strong hand after multiple repeated hands to score a boatload of points, and finally giving the player control over how fast the game game goes, makes this an incredibly addictive puzzler that's insanely addictive and satisfying to go fast in. You'll be into a flow state and feeling great til you add the final hexagon you need to your hand only to find out thats the colour the fairy wanted causing your hand to blow up and throwing you totally off your groove. It can get brutally tough when you're going at max speed, trying to parse each symbol to decide what your next hand can be, and it's loads of fun. Unfortunately its outside of the core gameplay loop the game waivers a bit. Only 8 levels, and they get hard fast to dress up how little there actually is, all presented in a short visual novel that doesn't really have much to say. Outside of this story mode, the only other gameplay mode is an asymmetrical online mode, where you download other people's playthroughs and essentially compete against that. For a game with no direct multiplayer and zero ways to really impact your opponent outside of being rewarded for going faster then them, its a really strange edition. A simple score attack mode where you dont compete against anyone would make infinitely more sense to me, but no, its janky to even set up a game, which I think is a little ridiculous and sort of a death knell for an addictive puzzler like this. Tetris games have had quick play modes forever for a reason, the fact this game has such a sticky gameplay loop that you sort of need to jump through hoops to access is a real bummer Also, I couldn't find any way outside of external softwares like lossless scaling to make this fullscreen, let alone borderless. It really makes this game feel sort of unfinished and like it was just sort of thrown onto steam because why not. Oh, and a small note, this game will probably be rough for the colourblind. Making a yellow shape and an orange shape that look virtually identical was certainly a choice. Overall, while tremendously rough around the edges and begging for a good bit of polish and modernisation, at its price Packet Queen is still an easy pick-up for anyone who wants the addictive 'race your brain' style of puzzler like tetris, in a totally fresh new way. I would adore it if the developers did a remaster with more content and took some inspiration from the modern Puyo Puyo games on how to dress up a puzzle game like this, because the gameplay loop is totally solid. I'd recommend it for sure, and hey if you like fast-paced solitaire style games, I'd recommend Pocket Card Jockey on the 3DS as well!

This is the weirdest thing I've seen in a while. Just kind of baffling gameplay that I don't fully understand what it is going for but I like that it's something different even if it feels a little simple so far. Not sure I completely recommend it but there's something to it and I felt like this game deserved at least one review after being on Steam for seven years.