PAX East 2017 – Tumbleseed Hands On

By Nick on

About Nick

Founder and co-host of Cast of Thrones. Say hello on twitter. @rbristow

 

TumbleSeed_Environment_forest

Tumbleseed is a hard game to describe. I can show you a picture of the game and you’ll probably say, ‘that’s beautiful.’ I could show you five minutes of gameplay, and still you would probably be lost, but totally entranced in its pastel world. Tumbleseed is a new kind of rogue like that plays like nothing you’ve played before.

You control a seed, trying to get to the top of a mountain. As you traverse the treacherous terrain, you have the ability to change suits giving you various abilities to help you along the way. Switching between them allows you to charge up the abilities you think will be most useful on your journey. Get spikes to attack enemies, plant a flag to create a checkpoint for yourself.

TumbleSeed_Environment_limestone

All that being said, it doesn’t really get to whats really different about Tumbleseed. It’s all about control. You don’t control the seed directly. Instead you control the left and right side a line. Moving each independently on the screen. Lift the left side and the seed with roll right. Lift them simultaneously and you’ll move up the mountain. This sounds  simple enough, but everything is physics based. You are literally balancing and things get out of hand quickly as you pick up too much speed in one direction. I died a lot. This is not an easy game, but watching the developer dance around the map like it was nothing gave me hope that I too could be a seed master.

Tumbleseed comes out PS4, Mac, PC, and most importantly on the title starved Switch in the next couple of weeks. There isn’t a hard release date at this time.

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