Xross Dreams

In short, if you are into VS puzzle color match games, this should strongly scratch your itch due to the sheer amount of gameplay styles available to play, and nobody else thought of doing the multi-game fusion as expansive as this, However, I should stress at this Xmas release, the developer has put out a competent product in spite of crashes and some unbalanced gameplay difficulties. I have recently got this game on Xmas day when it shadow dropped almost out of nowhere on Xmas day. The first thing I have done is play through the "school" to gain awareness of the characters game-play move-set. Only after getting through the school mode could I feel comfortable enough to try out the single player "story" mode. When playing the single player mode, the objective is to send as much garbage to the opponent until any garbage reaches the X-mark, causing their defeat. While the easy ones have less garbage required to clear, the tougher opponents with high garbage row requirements can be more problematic since AI opponents do not play like players, but only send garbage or other exclusive hindrances at repeating time intervals. The AI's purpose to only send garbage at overwhelming rates feels a lot like coin operated arcade video games of the late 1980's to early 90's when "cheating" AI was implemented to secondarily test the player's skills by illusion, but primarily outdo the player through its own means rather than following the gameplay rules. Should the AI feature stay as is without "playing" like the player, then make the AI garbage or hindrance timers slower to allow more player reaction time. In addition to the AI level currently reaching to "cheating" on advanced story levels, the tile drop system seems to be too slow when quick reaction is necessary. The majority of game's tile dropping mechanics are dictated by fast drop (down) or the slow 'strategic' drop (up), with no way of making instant snap drop. If the instant snap drop was implemented and the fast drop would might be faster, then the game modes would feel more compelling as a versus puzzle game it aims to be. Otherwise, please purchase the game to support the distinct multi game versus concept, and please DO NOT PRICE DROP. Address the issues first, and the game would be better with the current price point.

This game is being advertised in a current sale as having Rollback Netcode. Online play is actually completely nonfunctional—every match desyncs within a minute—to the point that anyone actually wanting to play it has been using Parsec or Steam Remote Play instead. Xross Dreams is a wonderful, unique idea; it throws a whole bunch of puzzle games together, with a couple new varieties added to the mix, and combines them together into a 2v2 tag battle format. Everyone sends unique types of garbage, such that you actually have to pay attention *who* your opponent is playing; you have to be able to adapt to a wide variety of situations on the fly. Tag mechanics mean that you can do things like swapping out to your backup game for a better matchup, or save something you've been building up until you think the time is right. Unfortunately, the game is hampered by details such as a difficult-to-navigate UI, frequent bugs (especially with certain matchups), and slightly sketchy balance issues. Controls can be a bit of a mess, and you must share all controls between every type of game, which can make a few combinations that sound good in theory become impractical in practice. There's no way to tell how much damage you're about to receive at any given time, and the game intentionally does not show you the state of your board when an opponent's attack would kill you (it skips dropping the garbage normally to show your board exploding), leading to many, many cases where you ask, "What killed me? Why did I die?" There's a bunch of stuff like this, problems and unfortunate design decisions... but it still would all be trivial to me, an easy recommend, if the game just *worked* online. But it doesn't. It clearly doesn't, it hasn't since the game launched, and yet it is being advertised like that isn't the case. This does not sit well with me, to the point that I'm finally leaving a negative review months after my initial refund.

The game is incomplete. What you are paying for is the hopes that it will take its fantastic ideas and fully realize them. There are crashes. There are softlocks. The online is fully nonfunctional, regardless of what the marketing will tell you. The developer doesn't communicate well with the playerbase. Balance changes happen while core features remain nonfunctional. Patches have slowed. Discoveries by the playerbase regarding interactions of the systems get perceived as glitch hunting and subsequently "fixed" by the developer, discouraging experimentation with the game. All the while, the developer talks at end about how games aren't obscure enough anymore or that there's still things about the game to discover to play it better. There's a lot of good in here, but it's not ready yet. Treat it like an early access title, because it is one. I personally really adore the ideas here, and it motivated me to play more of these kinds of games in general, but until the game is complete (most especially in the online), I cannot recommend it.

It's only been out for a day, but already this game deserves more people to play it. If you're wondering if you should get it, the answer is PROBABLY yes, but I'll try and explain my thoughts. Xross Dreams is, at its core, a love-letter to VS puzzle games from the 90s and beyond. I can only imagine the dev played Tetris VS Puyo Puyo and went "hold my beer", and mashed em ALL together. It's like the Mario Crossover of Puzzle Games. Every puzzle game you can imagine (except for a few notable missing ones, Tetris is prolly missing for fear of their antsy lawyers), mashed together into one game. The single player is enjoyable, but is quite hard. There are, at the time of writing, there are ten different playable characters (with more being added later, so I've heard), and you won't be good at all of them. Each character's gameplay is a different puzzle game, most of them classics, but there's some original ones in here too. A mild complaint, for the new ones, the tutorial isn't quite in depth enough. I recognized all the others, as I'm a big puzzle nerd, but Journey in particular really confused me at first. No big deal though, and it DOES have a tutorial mode, which is better than a lot of games like this. The game handles trash and attacks well, depending on each character. And in single player, your enemy isn't actually playing. They just periodically send over trash to your side, and you can see the trash on their side you're throwing back. It's a solid way to do it, instead of pretending like the AI is playing some game against you. So far the game seem relatively balanced, maybe with some weaker than others (poor Skeleton seems pretty weak, tragically), but balance changes can come and go. It doesn't seem too bad with that right now. Also, the game has a tendency to crash. It just came out today, and it's to be expected. You might think that's a big turn off, but honestly it's not as bad as you'd expect? It launches fast, and you get back into the action. Each match is, y'know, the length of an arcade puzzle bout, so like a couple minutes max. It's no big deal if you lost one due to a crash, just try again. I'm sure this issue will be fixed soon, anyway. Another issue I expect to be fixed soon is the online multiplayer, which seemed broken each time I tried it. Again, it's the first day. But if you want to hold off on buying it for that, I guess I can't blame you? VS is a big positive for a game like this, but I can't stress enough, the single player is very fun on its own. And it's extremely varied. I played for five hours straight today, and didn't get bored at all. All in all, I'm extremely excited by this game, and super excited to see if any more comes of it in the future. Again, please consider getting it and supporting the devs, as they've made something truly special here, and we need more fun VS puzzle games getting some spotlights.

This is not a very well made game (lots of baffling decisions and tons of jank/bugs) but it is very very GOOD

A love letter to 1v1 puzzle games, and tag-style fighting games. Each playable character draws inspiration from a different competitive classic puzzle game (Puzzle Fighter, Puyo Puyo, etc) and there are a couple original puzzle styles in there too. What's more, you can tag out to your second character and switch to playing a completely different type of puzzle game in the middle of the match. Some aspects of the game interface are a little rough around the edges but the dev has been super active with frequent post-launch updates, and the core gameplay is really fun. I'm not a really experience puzzle gamer so I find the single player Plot to be pretty difficult, but I keep finding myself coming back to it and trying to hone my skills with the different characters.

The Amazing Action Puzzle Game!

As of time of writing the online is basically non-functional due to constant desyncs, and the way the story mode plays feels kind of awful, and it's generally kind of buggy and janky, but the music and art and the story itself in plot mode and local vs are all extremely fantastic. This might be the best game I've ever played

besides like the online atm and some bugs I think this game is worth the 25. A lot of indies kinda undersell their worth and yeah a cheaper game is of course good to buy but I think a lot of the games not only are worth said money but that the dev should get more money to you know. work on said game. i love puzzle games and i love puyo tet so this game is like the perfect game to me. I say the world should get it but if any of the problems can like be a stopping point for you I can say wait for it to be on sale/when a BIG BIG BIG "THE GAME IS NOW BORDERLINE PERFECT" Update, cause this game is probably the coolest concept ever, executed extremely well.

Make the controls easier and I'll give it 3 stars. Make it steam deck compatible I'll give it 5 and tell everyone about it.