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8.2 ultra recommended
Back when I was a kid (not too long ago in dog years), we played computer games about pushing crates around tight warehouses. The first of these puzzle games was known as Sokoban, which means "warehouse worker" in Japanese. It's one of those classic game ideas like Tetris that you wish you could take to an alternate universe and claim as your own $$$ ka-ching.
Crumb, from Piddle Pup Games, is a friendly Sokoban variant for the casual game market. The mysterious Forest Mother has vanished and as her only apprentice it's your job to find her. Luckily she left a few clues. You'll have to search through 50 levels of forest glade goodness for bits of magical essence - crumbs - that she's dropped along the way. For each level you complete, your collected crumbs reveal another page in the Forest Mother's diary, which reads like a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, except without as many violent deaths or donkeys. Why did the Forest Mother take such a meandering path through her woods? Will she punish you for collecting all her magic crumbs thereby making it difficult to find the way home? There's only one way to find out!
Gameplay involves moving your apprentice (I chose a giant purple mail carrier monster as mine) through a tile-based level looking for crumbs. There are fire essence crumbs, water essence crumbs, smokey essence crumbs, and more. The Forest Mother is smart enough to know that bread crumbs are quickly scarfed down by birds. Let's see a bird scarf down a pile of fire essence crumbs! Ha ha ha. Sometimes giant boulders get in your way. Luckily you can push them around, as long as they have some free space on the opposite side. As in Sokoban, figuring out how and where to push the right boulder to open up the right path makes up the majority of Crumb's puzzles.
Player beware: Sokoban games require a level of patience and an ability to strategize beyond that of most puzzle games. Some might get frustrated. But patient puzzle lovers like me will be delighted. Starting at about level 29, "Another Water Hazard," the trickiness of Crumb begins to mount. Hint: use the "Show Map" option to see everthing at once and plan your moves ahead.
Boulders can be used to ford streams. Simply push one into the water and it will sink and allow you to stand on that square. Boulders can also be used to put out forest fires, of which there are an alarming amount. And they're all fat and spikier than puffer fish, so you know they're dangerous. (Here's a link to a picture of a baby puffer fish puffing up just as hard as it can.) But roll a boulder onto a fire square and the fire will be extinguished and you can pass. You can also push boulders to block or even destroy monsters.
Yes, there are monsters! Giant drops of water, giant bees, giant walking daisies, and more. If a monster grabs you, you'll lose the last crumb you collected, but the monster will be destroyed. What's that you say? You didn't collect any crumbs yet? Well, in that case the monster devours you and you have to begin the level again.
Everyone's afraid of monsters. Don't start making excuses like "oh no, monsters... I have to wash my hair" because there are also magic potions strewn about the forest glades to help you on your quest. Yellow potions allow you to stun any monster you come into contact with. Red potions allow you to walk through forest fires. And blue potions allow you to enter Ghost Quadrant where everything is backwards! Just kidding, blue ones let you walk on water. You can also find brightly-colored keys, which allow you to unlock gates locked with the same color lock.
Collect the required amount of crumbs for the level, and the door to the Enchanted Forest roaming cottage (similar to a Tardis) will open and allow you access to the next level. You'll also get to read another page in the Forest Mother's secret diary. It would be more impressive if the diary pages followed along somehow with the levels in the game, but one can't have everything. The less moves you make - and yes your apprentice is wearing a pedometer - the higher your score for the level. If you complete a level in a sufficiently low number of moves, you'll receive a yellow flower on the forest map.
I really like the graphics in this game. If you enjoy old-fashioned pixel art and don't really care for all this modern plasma this and particle that, be sure and check out the excellent tile work in Crumb. (Except for those fires. Yuck.) The main game screen trappings with curled vines and potion and key inventory slots are particularly nice. The music, however is kind of dull and you'll either turn it way down/off or replace the .ogg files with renamed Three Stooges sound clips. (I'm just kidding for the love of god don't do that I am serious don't do it.)
Long before I found the Forest Mother, I found a few annoyances. For example, the game crashed on me once (but only once) in the level "Toram Islands." Not sure why. Reloading was easy, though. Another time, on "Free For All" I somehow lost a smokey crumb and couldn't complete a level. I swear I checked everywhere and it wasn't there. (I think a monster stole it.) It's also easy to randomly teleport onto a monster if you choose a bad time/direction to step onto a teleportation pad. That seems kind of unfair to me. And the mouse control arrow should not be shown if I'm using the keyboard to move my apprentice through the forest! Using a mouse to play Sokoban is like using a pair of pants to drive a car. Finally, the characters all walk left and right along the exact bottom of the tile instead of the center. Visually, very odd.
Overall, Crumb is a peaceful oldschool puzzle game masquerading as a casual game, and you owe it to yourself to check it out. Unless you're really into zen and incense and Sokoban, you'll likely get frustrated on some puzzles. But I'll bet you'll return every now and then... to try to finish another level. In just a few days I played it so much that its cute red-headed girl icon popped up on my Windows "Start" button list of frequently-used programs.