Title : Cacoma Knight in Bizyland
Publisher : SETA Corporation
Developer : Affect
Genre : Action / Puzzle
Players : 1 / 2 Players
Release Date : 1993
Estimated Value (as of today's date) : $15-$20
If there ever was a Super Nintendo game that confused the hell out of me the first time I played it, it would have to be Cacoma Knight in Bizyland. I'm not even talking about the bizarre name, nor the fact that the box art looks like a creepy Disney-esque styled video game, but the fact that I didn't even know what I was getting into when I started playing it.
Cacoma is an interesting genre that sort of faded into obscurity after the NES. It's one of those "action-puzzle" games like the Adventures of Lolo. But I'm not rightfully able to compare it to Lolo, because it's entirely different. Basically, the game just takes elements of action games where you need to manuever your characters and avoid enemies on a "puzzle-tile-themed" screen, and solve the actual damn puzzle. Puzzles which I had little to no clue how to solve most of the time.
If you've read my past reviews, you know I'm an absolute mess when it comes to puzzle games.
The Kingdom of Bizyland is at war.....with the kingdom of Lasyland. Yeah, that's right. The dread Lasyland. You don't want to mess with Lasyland. Especially when they kidnap your princess, split her apart into itty bitty particle pieces and spread her across the corrupted land! What the hell did I just say? Yeah, that's the plot to this game. It's up to you to uncover her pictorial images off of the decrepit landscape and free her from the evil queens clutches!
What do people have to smoke to come up with this stuff? Pass it over here!
The game concept is this - each level is a singular tiled space that has a different theme. It could be a cave, a flowery field, or a pretty little town. BUT, the image becomes corrupted and turns into the "Dark world" version of it. You need to take your little dude and uncover the picture by creating connected segments, all while avoiding enemies that start attacking you as soon as you start moving. The more you uncover, the faster you complete the level.
It starts off easy..a measly 50% of the image needs to be revealed..but boy...does it get hard.
You'll occasionally come across power ups when you reveal certain squares, but I'll be honest. I don't know what they even do. Besides the fact that they looked like they were pulled from other games. LOOK! It's LINKS OCARINA! *points above*
Surprisingly enough, the gameplay is simple, but somewhat addictive. I found myself just obsessed with revealing the pictures, and discovering the fastest route to do so, which ends up being somewhat impossible later on in the levels when you have twenty different monsters on the screen for the most part you are forced to just avoid. Still, on a Super Nintendo, you're expecting a little bit more from a game. To me, it comes across as just a pretty puzzle game that would have fit better on an earlier system.
Perhaps that's just my biased toward puzzle games speaking. In fact, it probably is.
The one thing the game has going for it, are it's fun-filled imagery and audio. The world is very imaginative, with various creatures and landscapes pulled out of a steampunk animation. For me, the game is more like a "reveal the picture" escapade, with little more offered. Still, I'm not sure why I couldn't stop playing.
Perhaps it's the simplicity with the combination of progressive difficulty that made this game decent. And that truly is the defining factor in successful puzzle games. You don't want to do too much, or too little, and you need to offer enough challenge where the player wants to keep going.
Works for me. A pleasant surprise, with a weird arse name.
Final Score (out of 5) :
Until next time, keep on gaming!
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