Once Upon A Puppet

Once Upon a Puppet is a small 2.5D puzzle-platformer set in a magical theatre world, complete with a king, a queen, and a prince - just as it should be. However, something terrible has happened: the kingdom's prince has disappeared and in despair, the king is desperately trying to write the perfect play to rewrite history. This means scrapping a lot of unfinished stories, sets, memories, characters, and helpers, all of which end up in The Understage, a mysterious world beneath the kingdom where these discarded items and ideas end up.

The King's former tailor Nieve, who is just a hand, has also gone down the drain, as has the wooden puppet Drev, who has previously performed for the King. Nieve and Drev bump into each other, almost by accident, and they become entangled by a magical thread so that they are now connected. The hand of Nieve now controls the wooden puppet Drev as a puppeteer would control their puppet in a theatre and the intrepid pair must now work together to find out what happened to the prince and of course, nothing is as it seems.

The only catch is that the two are inextricably linked, and with a magical thread holding them together, it's not as simple as taking a pair of scissors and cutting the strings. However, the two soon realise that the magical threads can be quite useful, as they gain various new properties by combining their magical thread with new threads they find. This enables them to glide through the air for short periods of time, launch themselves over long distances like a large slingshot, or shoot with a bow and arrow.

Once Upon a Puppet is not a difficult game and the puzzle gameplay is quite "light" and easy to approach. Unfortunately, the game's difficulty comes from the wrong reasons, namely a gameplay and technical side that doesn't really work. It starts with a, at times, slightly illogical level design, so it can be a bit difficult to see where you need to go to progress in the game. Another thing is that in certain puzzles you can puzzle yourself into a corner so that the puzzle can't be completed and you have to reload your last save game - it's not something that happens often, but it does happen and it's pretty unfortunate game design.

On top of this, the controls are rather imprecise and clumsy (as you are a wooden puppet controlled by some strings) and it can sometimes be difficult to judge distances and your position in the semi-3D game world. These things combined mean that it all ends up being a bit difficult for all the wrong reasons, which is unfortunately frustrating.

What really keeps Once Upon a Puppet afloat is the unique visuals, where everything is designed as a theatre world with cardboard and wooden backdrops, and the "Junk Monsters" you encounter along the way are quite ingeniously composed of trash that the sad king has thrown out. The visuals are really well done and quite magical in a "theatre-like" way, but unfortunately it can't make up for the gameplay challenges.

Once Upon a Puppet is a cosy little puzzle-platformer with a unique visual side, but with a rather mediocre gameplay that has a few unique tricks up its sleeve in the form of the collaboration between Nieve and Drev. The game gets an extra mark for the visuals, as they are very well realised and give Once Upon a Puppet a very special atmosphere and look.

If you're a big fan of puzzle-platformers, Once Upon a Puppet might be an okay experience - others should probably avoid this otherwise unique theatre adventure. If you're unsure, there's a free demo on Steam that you can check out.