Cefore (PC) Preview

Little demolisher-guy what's-his-name must collect some sort of alien tech with his zapper; simple blue blocks, basically, so don't expect something fancy. In order to do so, these must be on the ground in order for him to place a beacon of sorts, which will enable their gathering. The catch? These alien boxes are rarely on the ground, thus, being the professional that he is, this fellow will have to bring them down from whatever structure they happen to be upon, with a little help from a few plastic explosives.

From a technical aspect, this is a decent, mobile-friendly indie product. In other words, the visuals are nice, clean, and simple, but lack character, the performance is good for a Unity-crafted product, and the controls are great, with the gamepad currently being somewhat inferior to the WASD + mouse scheme. Finally, not a single bug appeared (or was hurt) during the process of writing this preview article, which is always a good omen when dealing with something that's in the Alpha stage of development.

Is Cefore any fun, though? Well, the short answer is: yes; yes it is. The real question, however, is for how long can this be so - and this is the main obstacle that the developer will have to face before the final release hits the digital shelves. First of all, as of now it doesn't have much "meat" on its bones, as this Early Access release comes with only two modes available, with neither of them being something special.

The main one has you complete levels, with new tools introduced every now and then, with the challenge rising depressingly slowly for a puzzler, even one that mostly aims at genre newcomers, and it comes with no intricate scoring mechanic, meaning that there's no reason to replay a stage and try to do a better job. Sandbox lets you create a custom level and either try to "beat it," or just blow it up for the sake of it. It's a fun toy, but also one that needs to offer more than that - namely, a 'Save' button.

Of course, all of this is understandable, as Cefore isn't ready yet. The real problem with it, however, seems to be its main concept. Simply put, because you basically control things via explosions, things are somewhat unpredictable, even though nothing feels... unrealistic… when that detonator button gets pushed. The thing is, though, that everything revolves around trial and error. The data blocks ended up over 'there' instead of right 'here?' Well, undo your last move and try something slightly different... again, and again, and again.