Puppet Kings

Puppet Kings is an interesting game... it is a breakout game except the bosses are the blocks that you have to hit to beat. The game starts off kind of slow you have to beat 5 bosses before you fight one of the new characters in a split screen battle. If you win you get a new character for your next run. Each new character is stronger then the last one. The other thing about the game is that you can not pick which way your characters can travel to, the game decides this randomly. And some times there are surprises and some times not. After 4 hours of game play i have unlocked only 3 characters and beaten the game twice. Its an okay casual game, it gives enough to be a quick time killer but that is about it. If you want a game with more meat on it then this is not the game for you. I like it, it is easy to play. But when i am hungry for a challenge I go play something else. Best to buy this game on sale.

Pretty fun arkanoid style game. At first I was pissed that when you lose all your lives you start over until I noticed that it saves all the bosses you killed and the routes you've taken. So different playthroughs will unlock new routes, bosses, and characters to play as. Unfortunately, at least for me- this game could really benefit more if it had some achievements. There's a lot to unlock and discover and having them would make it more enjoyable to go for just one more run again and again. The devs made mention if adding them way back in 2017, and this being may if 2021 it doesn't look like they're going to add them in which is unfortunate. Having said that, it's still an excellent game.

An Breakout/Arkanoid-like game with less abstraction, instead of playing a paddle that moves from left to right to hit colored blocks, you play one of 5 available "Puppet Kings". You start with one and can unlock new characters during the game. It's a bold move reiterating such an antique game concept to an modern game and in my viewpoint, the developers were succesful with it. Instead of breaking blocks, you break bosses. This is a boss-rush game where the enemy itself consists of tons of parts you break apart, this is interesting because instead of just having to catch the ball, you also have to dodge attacks of the enemies with your paddle. If you get hit you become stunned for a while, which makes it harder to catch up with the ball. So while destroying the enemy you also make them less harmful, by making them smaller or destroy significant parts they can attack you with. The Boss design itself is superb because basically no idea becomes recycled, nothing is streamlined, every boss is unqiue and there are plenty of them (I've found 20 so far). The first boss is a funny little aversion of your expectations, because it resembles the colored arkanoid blocks, but they also have eyes and teeths and try to squish you. What really sets this game apart is its arcade structure, the game description on steam says it has an "rouge-like twist" which kinda scared me off, because I don't like procedural level design. But what it actually means is simply that you have a set amount of lifes to play through the game, you won't be able to discover everything on your first run because there are a lot of alternate paths that lead to different bosses. It's like in Star Fox 64. There is a set amount of level which level you play depends on varying conditions for every boss. Like for example which part of the boss you destroy first. But that's not all, like mentioned you have 5 characters and while unlocking new characters you also unlock new levels on future playthroughs, so many, that up to this point i'm still not sure if I've seen everything this game has to offer, you have to play through the game at least 3 times to see the credits, the final level will vary several times and i'm at the point where I believe I beat the "true final boss" but i'm still not sure sure. At the point where I saw the Credits I thought "well now i've seen everything" only to become surprised with a new secret phase of the first boss, after that I've unlocked another new level with an absurdly hard boss fight that even puts the final boss to shame and even this boss has extra conditions to unlock another new one, it's crazy! A single playthrough will appromixately take 12 to 20 Minutes, it depends on the path you take and which character you play (the last one is pretty overpowered) The game is also given by it's nature pretty RNG heavy, so how succesful you become may also depend on the droprate of power-ups, especially lifes are something that can drop plenty of times or not at all, this can sometimes result in a bit frustration if bosses time attacks so inconvenient that it's next to impossible to catch up with the ball. Also some bosses take way too long in direct comparison with others sometimes it becomes absurd. There is one boss with 4 forms and several phases that could be easily the final boss in another game regarding to representation, some boss designs are really obscure which is what I like but i'm not looking forward getting accidentally in the route of the mentioned boss, my biggest gripe about it is, that there is no compensation for it, after that boss, you simply take the route to the next level and it doesn't look like you can unlock new endings by taking special routes. I also encountered a few bugs that made it impossible to clear some of my runs wich is fortunelately not often the case but can still happen. All in all the games takes its unique premise and pretty much implements every imagineable idea I could think of, there is some kind of versus battle where you battle against the boss for clearing faster the level, there is a Pong/Tennis like fight where you smash your- and the bosses balls over the horizion, there are bosses that can tamper with your controls and visibility. Some require precision, some speed, some reflexes and so on. It really accomplished to surprise me and that's something that not a lot of games aren't able to anymore. Definitely a hidden gem.

Maravilloso Juego, un #breakout que deja ver las mejoras técnicas que un estudio de hoy puede hacerle al género. Excelente música, animación impecable. ¡Bravo! Gracias #TimbaGames por entregarnos esta clase de títulos. Les invitamos a ver completa la reseña en nuestra página: https://tangrandeyjugando.com/2019/02/09/juguemosindies-puppet-kings/ O directamente en nuestro canal de Youtube "Tan grande y Jugando"

super jeux, bon graphismes, les boss sont difficiles, dommages qu'il n'y a pas de multijoueurs et de split screen versus

El gameplay está entretenido, pero lo mejor es el estilo artístico en mi opinión. Le doy un 8/10 porque hay algunos bosses algo irritantes.

NOT RECOMMENDED - it is an Arkanoid clone that is extremely unforgiving and is made even more difficult than the arcade original by utilizing view-obscuring visual effects and the enemies stunning you for 2 to 5 seconds, forcing you to lose. One of the bosses spawns cages that prevent you from moving for about five seconds, practically guaranteeing that you lose a life. The game is not long, something like 40 to 60 minutes if you do not game over (read: you use Cheat Engine to hack the lives to stay high). It has unlockable characters (in that split screen level that is quite difficult to beat), though they only provide cosmetic changes. It is about three playthroughs long. Yes, you have to repeat beat multiple bosses to get there. It is dull. The chances are that you are not going to enjoy this game even if you like the original Arkanoid. It has so many ploys of unfairness it feels like a game made like a person who does not play games to enjoy them. Invisible level objects are just one of the many deliberate irritations in the game. The graphical effects obscuring the view also cause frame drops. You have been warned.