PutUp
Score: 72% ESRB: Not Rated Publisher: Matuda Games Developer: Matuda Games Media: Download/1 Players: 1 Genre: Puzzle
Graphics & Sound: PutUp is a fun puzzle game that takes basic AstroPop-styled puzzle mechanics and offers enough twists and variety to warrant at least a download of the game's demo. PutUp has an interesting feel as you glide your ghost across the bottom of the screen collecting colored candy. Levels are just columns with the candy icons filling up the stacks, and between-level menus (the towns you are playing in) have an interesting flat 2D feel to them that almost have a paper-cutout appearance. PutUp doesn't go for an uber-sleek or shiny approach, and instead pulls out a distinct Halloween theme with sprites that, while look good, feel slightly off. The game's sound gets the job done, but doesn't really offer anything too inventive. Both the background music and the various sound effects are quickly forgotten and don't really add anything to the overall experience. The only place where sound can be helpful is in the between-level challenges where objects fall from the sky. Here, a warning buzzer is played when non-candied falling objects appear.
Gameplay: PutUp is broken into two types of gameplay. Each level consists of pulling down different colored candies and moving them to other columns, and while the object is to always clear candies by matching same-colored sweets, the feel of the levels are drastically different because of other rules. The level is then followed up by a chance to earn extra candies/points by trying to catch falling sweets in your Halloween bag. Here, you glide back and forth as the objects fall. Candy isn't all that's raining though as rocks, leaves, slow-down power-ups and other extras will also come down. The game is broken into three towns of increasing size. Each town contains levels that could have you simply clear the board, do it under a time or move limit or force you to do it while not letting the candy-blocks cross a line on the board. It's the variety in the levels that keeps PutUp from simply fading into the background of puzzle-casual games, but it also suffers a bit because of it since it sometimes feels a bit unfocused.
Difficulty: PutUp isn't a very challenging game. While there was a certain gameplay style that pretty much always took me a couple of runs to actually get past, most of the experience not only had me flying through the levels, but also earning all three stars. The levels that took multiple plays were the ones that required you to clear the board with only a certain number of moves. As gamers familiar with this style are undoubtedly aware, this particular puzzle-based setup often takes a few attempts in order to get the moves exactly right. Outside of those levels though, the game doesn't really pose that much of a challenge. Because of this, casual gamers might find the experience way too short and not worth much in the way of replayability.
Game Mechanics: PutUp's main draw is the variations on its theme and the different way it approaches the core candy-moving mechanic it uses. Instead of simply providing shorter time limits or greater point goals as the game moves on, it throws variations like the move limit or height limit levels. As mentioned above, this also feels like one of the game's weaknesses as it doesn't provide quite enough focus for the player to get really good in any one area. In the end, it almost feels like the development team couldn't quite settle on a design decision and decided to implement all of the gameplay types and variations they could come up with. While not bad, it just feels like it still has some room to grow. PutUp is a fun distraction that is at least worth the trial demo. While it won't be the next blow-up indie title, it can still serve as a fun experience.
-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer
Minimum System Requirements: Windows Operating System, 1.2 GHz Processor, 128 MB RAM, 64 MB Video RAM Graphics Card, 100 MB HD Space   Test System: Windows 7 Ultimate, AMD Phenom 9500 Quad-Core 2.20 GHz, 4 GB Ram, Radeon HD 5870 Graphics Card, DirectX 9.0c
Related Links: PutUp Official Home Page
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