App Army Assemble: PomPom: The Great Space Rescue - "Do this platformer's fresh mechanics make it a must-play?"

PomPom: The Great Space Rescue is a platformer with a fresh spin on the tried and tested formula. Rather than controlling the titular character, you are in charge of the floating platforms dotted around each level. It's an interesting concept that promises something new to the genre, so we handed the game over to our App Army to see what they thought of it.

Here's what they said:

This was an interesting twist to the usual platforming game - you don’t control the character you use the various items he finds to build a safe way forward. I found it strange to leave Pom Pom to control his own way but after a while, it was great to only have to concentrate on one thing. There were a variety of objects to pick up and use as bridges or to help pick up rewards or defeat enemies. However, I found that on occasions I couldn’t drop the platforms on time or the area I wanted was just off-screen, which did take a certain amount of joy from the game. I enjoyed the twist in gameplay but not quite there with controls.

Pom Pom has all the trappings of a platform game from the 16-bit era consoles, even the level select screen is reminiscent of Nintendo’s Mario games. However the twist is you don’t directly control Pom Pom, you use the boxes that PP picks up to create platforms and springs to get PP to the level exit. There is a pause mechanic that gives you time some to plan out the route but I found it didn’t last long enough and quickly got frustrated with the game.

This is a shame as the pixel graphics look lovely and there are plenty of levels to play through but the game is just too frustrating to be enjoyable. Hopefully, there will be a fix in the future that will let you pause the game for longer.

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Pom Pom: The Great Space Rescue is a different take on the platform genre. Instead of controlling the character, you control the stage which is very, very interesting. The graphics give a retro feel to the game, but immediately when one gets to playing, you can bet that there is a very steep learning curve to the game, as I felt in my case when I was playing this game. Right from the beginning, and even in the tutorials, one could see that this game would most likely be a very difficult game. The game has the potential to be a very good one on the Apple App Store, but the developer could consider tweaking the difficulty of the game a bit, given the new nature of this type of platform game.

PomPom is a cute rodent of sorts with a cuddly anime vibe. The gameplay is a mixture of a sidescrolling platformer and classic Lemmings. PomPom runs along like a lemming with no control. Instead, you pause the running and insert different objects to jump or traverse. PomPom jumps from the point you paused demanding you both times when to jump and get an object in place.

Overall the presentation is vibrant and cute. The only exception is the level map which looks a bit muddy.
I found PomPom: The great space rescue is a fun game that brings a fresh take on platforming.

I liked the sound of this from the start. A twist on the platformer, actually moving the platforms rather than the character. And while I still love the idea, I think that the opening is a bit more difficult than it needs to be. More time is available to place blocks, and maybe a few more blocks available to pick up. Something so that (in my case anyway) it didn’t take several tries to get through the initial stages. Because I’ll be honest, I hit a frustration wall pretty quickly.

Not that it’s a bad game. It’s an interesting and challenging game and a little different from most (and that’s something I’m always looking for in a game), but the difficulty curve was just a little too high for me right at the start. Hopefully, this can be tweaked in an update. And because I like the idea and potential of this game, I’d recommend looking at it if you’re a fan of platformers. But I’m still hoping it can be improved upon.

PomPom: The Great Space Rescue looks like a retro 2d platformer (my favourite genre) but it’s really a physics-based puzzle game. Instead of controlling the main character, you control the pieces necessary to advance the main character to the finish line. I wanted to like this game, but either I was bad, or there is too many things going on to control things well. You have to hit multiple buttons to freeze time to place the pieces on the screen, and I struggled to make it happen consistently. I would have preferred a standard 2d platformer but I get that the developers were trying to do something different. Unfortunately, I found myself losing interest and I will likely not go back to complete the game,

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Pompom: The Great Space Rescue