TUMBLESEED
Keep rollin’, rollin’, rollin’, rollin’
Most games’ difficulty levels are judged on the enemies and obstacles thrown at you, but there are others where the challenge is based on mastering a deliberately awkward control system. TumbleSeed is a perfect example of this.
Your aim is to get a little round seed to the top of a mountain by raising the long horizontal bar it’s sitting on. The left and right sticks move each end of the bar up and down, so by raising just one end you can create a slope and make the seed roll. That sounds like simplicity itself, but while it is an uncomplicated mechanic, it’s one that needs a great deal of patience: you have to take your time and make slow movements because tilting the bar too far can make the ball roll too quickly to control.
TumbleSeed is procedurally generated, so each time you play you’ll be faced with a random array of enemies and deadly holes. While there are power-ups you can collect to kill the baddies and plant checkpoint flags, the game has a tendency to chuck a lot at you fairly early on1 so there can be a lot of frustrating moments.
The result is a game that’s full of extreme highs and lows. You’re constantly battling with the control system so much that reaching a new area feels like a genuine accomplishment, but any time you lose your lives and have to go right back to the bottom of the mountain and start again you’ll find yourself turning the air bluer than Sonic’s naughty magazine collection. 2 TumbleSeed is a beautiful game to look at and listen to, and as long as you have the self-restraint to methodically make your way upwards, it’s a fun (if immensely challenging) experience.
FOOTNOTES1 On one play through, an early level has more holes than a David Cage script. 2 Failure feels worse than in most games because it’s down to your own inability to control the seed.