Game of the week: Peregrin

A beautifully designed story-driven puzzle game, Peregrin is worth a download!

If you've read a few of my reviews before, you know I love a great puzzle game for lots of different reasons. Gameplay is usually simple to learn but hard to master, the puzzles give your brain a good workout, and an amazing puzzle game always blends genres in a way that other titles just can't. Peregrin is a fantastic puzzle game.

After downloading the title earlier this week, I found it really hard to put down, and soon enough the battery on my iPhone 8 Plus was dead, and I had spent the entire night engrossed in the beautiful world and story that Peregrin provides.

Stunning art

Plain and simple; Peregrin is gorgeous. Right from the very first scene, you see when you start a new game, all the way through the entire game, the beauty of the art and design of Peregrin shines through strong.

The game starts off with a short narration that kicks off into the story of the game, and that's where you'll first see the beautiful landscape drawings that look like incredible paintings. Of course, the art doing gameplay actually seems much different, but different isn't always bad.

With the top-down third-person view that Peregrin uses throughout the game, you don't get a super close look at the characters or the sprites of the enemies, and due to the very geometric art style, this could be problematic. Fortunately, Peregrin does an excellent job of making every creature you encounter look, sound, and move differently, so you don't have a hard time identifying what is what on the screen. Plus, the beautiful color palettes of each new area and the small details they do include (like the missiles and switches you find in the second area) are nice to see.

Puzzles are hard but super fun and diverse

The majority of the gameplay is based on getting the main character, Abi, through the various obstacles in her path. While Abi herself can't move the giant boulders or push over bridges that block her way, the creatures around her can. You'll have to possess the various creatures around you by using Abi's arcane powers that she concentrates through arcane totems she finds throughout the ruins.

The game itself does a great job of explaining how this possession works with the different creatures (since they all do different things) and quickly sets you off on your way to power through the puzzles that lie ahead. Of course, the puzzles get trickier as you go on, and after about 30 minutes of playing, you'll already come across some puzzles that are very challenging. Typically, puzzles require you to possess more than one creature in the right order to progress to the next area, where it gets complicated is with the puzzles that require you to backtrack and bring creatures from different locations. It feels great when you finally solve a puzzle, like a real accomplishment and the diversity in the creatures and the layouts of each area stop the gameplay from going stale.

Even combat is a puzzle

Peregrin also has a combat element to gameplay, which makes the game feel like more than a mere puzzle game but an adventure title as well. The combat is relatively simple, as it uses the same gameplay mechanics as the rest of the game, but surviving the combat is a puzzle itself. You'll need to attack and possess the creatures in the right order to claim victory. The encounters evolve as the game goes one by adding enemies with different types of attack, thus changing the way you have to approach the combat. I loved this part of the game way more than I thought I would, it's like a puzzle inside a puzzle, but it also adds a level of strategy to the Peregrin that isn't always seen in another puzzle games.

MFi Controller and Apple TV

I prefer gaming with a MFi Controller whenever possible, but I'm happy to say that Peregrin doesn't need a physical controller to be playable. Tapping the screen to get the right inputs is easy enough and doesn't feel choppy or hinder your ability to move around each stage.

The same can not be said for the Apple TV version of the game. The Siri Remote makes controlling Abi pretty tricky, and I often felt frustrated throughout the game, and I very quickly reached for my SteelSeries Nimbus MFi Controller.

Final thoughts

The gameplay and story alone make for a title that is well worth its $3.99 price tag, but Peregrin delivers such a beautiful world and pleasant gaming experience that I highly recommend gamers of all types sure give it a download.

Other games this week

Final Fantasy Dimensions II: Square Enix put out it's sequel to Final Fantasy Dimensions this week, and instead of being a free-to-play game it's gone premium. The $14.99 download cost may shock some of you, but for fans of the mobile Final Fantasy series, you know that Final Fantasy Dimensions II will deliver a mobile RPG experience like no other. $14.99 in the App Store

The Memoranda: A point-and-click adventure game that tells the story of a young woman who realizes she forgets her own name! Is she really losing her memory or is there something else that could explain the strange changes she's encountering? The art looks fantastic, and the game is loosely based on many of Haruki Murakami's short stories! $4.99 in the App Store