PIVO

Fun yet challenging game. Cheerful looking and easy to learn the controls. Have not finished it yet but I'm looking forward to see how it ends.

PIVO is a very cute and charming puzzle game, which revolves around switching between 2D and 3D perspectives to reach the goal. It's a short but sweet game, which will take about two hours to finish. I encountered a few glitches while playing, but I was still able to complete the game with no problems. I'd love to see more games from BLUECUBE in the future.

A cute little puzzle game. Features a corgi trying to save his mage owner, kidnapped by a mind-controlled slime. It ends with a happy reunion and a party for saving the day.
What more is there to say? It's a bit bland, and the core puzzle mechanic could at most be expanded to another axis of the 3D world to produce more complex puzzles, but it serves its purpose: it's a cool little puzzle game, featuring a cute dog, with nothing getting in the way of the main idea. Only 15 levels and a few cutscenes, could have cleared it faster than my time if I didn't overthink 2 certain levels' puzzles. Found a small exploit that can be used at most in 2 other levels that allow you to skip a bit of easy puzzling but I'm sure it's not a big deal: saves about 40 seconds at most, and it is pretty cool when you find it. Sound design is just okay, but wasn't expecting much more or less.
For a small graduation project, this hits a lot of good points. The price point may be a bit much if you consider how short it is, but it's still worth it with a discount. Looking forward to seeing BLUECUBE's future releases.

PIVO is a cute, simple yet puzzle game, about a corgi attempting to save his wizard owner. The puzzles are difficult yet rewarding, and I highly recommend it.
The gameplay is puzzle-based, with you switching between 2d (pixels) and 3d (voxels), so that's where PIVO comes from. The puzzles are very challenging. The difficulty curve is a little steep, but that's not a complaint, because each puzzle was thought out meticulously. The difficulty comes from an expectation that you will be familiar with the depth and complexity of these mechanics, and use them to their fullest. tl;dr, the level design is intelligent and thought out, requiring players to think each movement through.
The visual aesthetic is very simplistic, yet effective. They chose to focus on artstyle over fidelity, a good choice when the budget is pretty much non-existent, and also leads into why the game looks good. By focusing on stylized graphics, each block can look distinct, without being distracting. You instantly know what your focus is when it's shown on screen, and important items and objects pop out against the environment.
The music and sound design are well done, mostly. There was one sound I did not like, and it played whenever you moved a movable block (or set of blocks) using an interface. It's a scarping sound, and it's also mixed louder than everything else. Thankfully, PIVO has a music and SFX slider, and turning down the SFX mitigated this issue. Otherwise, the sound effects are good, and the music is nice as well.
The animations are, for the most part, pretty good. When climbing, two animations can play, but unfortunately, one is twice as long as the other. I'm not sure if you need to hold down the movement keys or the interaction key to play the faster animation, but this annoyed me when replaying. Otherwise, animations look fluid, especially explosions. This is demonstrated especially well in the end credits.
The weakest area, in my opinion, is the localization. The English translation is a bit lacking, but that's ok! English isn't the easiest to learn, and personally, I don't mind a translation with a few holes in it if it means I get to play the game. The question is "is the translation good enough to be understood?" and the answer is absolutely, especially when the game rarely relies on dialogue anyway.
The controls are the last area I'll mention, because I have little to say. They do their job, and if you're confused, a prompt will appear. Only 3 buttons are used (plus movement), so don't worry about getting lost.
I enjoyed this game a lot, and I hope I get to see more of them in the future. For a student project by 7-10 people, it shows polish, precision, intelligence, and player trust, that most other developers could only dream of.

Very interesting and challenging spacial puzzle, with a good story line but using very minimal words. As previously mentioned, the controls are a bit hard to get used to, but not terrible. Puzzles are clever, and take some imagination to figure out what to do in order to achieve your objectives - either reaching the end of the level, or collecting all the coins first. Since the camera is fixed, sometimes the coins are well-hidden, but the level-select entrance tells you how many coins are available, so you can search for them if you are lacking some when you reach the end of the level. I would love to see another game with this same premise, it is interesting and not over-used (I can think of only The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds and Paper Mario, for example). Also, very reasonably priced for a short puzzle game (note that I bought it on sale 50% off); I'm not certain exactly how many levels there are, but I believe I am at least halfway, after an hour's play time.

The Game itself is very adorable. though, the controls and movement are hard to get used to. using the arrow keys instead of WASD. As well as not being able to change from arrow to WASD. The game is really cute and very creative in the way it is. though I wish I didn't have to switch back to 2d mode just to jump and 3d mode to walk around. (I know thats the core mechanic of this game). All in All its a good game. Just hard to control and a bit hard to get used to. I enjoy the narrative of their owner being kidnapped and having to save them. Just make it so you can change the controls, Its worth the 7 bucks since the graphics are pretty nice for a 2d-3d game.