XBLIG Review: Aqualibrium

“A Little Bit Frustrating and a Little Bit Confusing.”

An XboxHornet review by Xavier “Mercedes” Marchena.

Aqualibrium falls into a trap that many indie puzzle games also fall into. They front-load all of the game’s features in a severely compacted tutorial that leaves you scratching your head in confusion. What actually happens is you simply do a couple of levels and boom you kinda get the gist of the game. For this game, it kind of ends up differently. It took me awhile to learn how to set blocks (although to be honest, I’m still not sure I learned it completely) because sometimes when I press the button nothing happens.

Nevermind the frustrating and/or buggy block placements, the name of this game is to guide the water down into the funnel. You do that by placing blocks that are fussy, opening gates and sometimes using yourself like a dam. If the water falls out of the funnel, the pressure in the room goes up. I don’t know why the pressure would rise nor I do know what the pressure is rising in. I’m thinking inside his pants. Oh snap son!

One thing really irks me about this title though. There’s no in game music. Just janky sound effects. If you’re gonna go for the nostalgic presentation, man, at least hire some dude from a college music course to throw together an 8-bit chiptune or something. This screams lazy to me. There’s actual effort in the game, don’t get me wrong; but it doesn’t grab me at all. After a few levels I lost complete interest and had to force myself to play on. It goes with what I said earlier. Aqualibrium blew their load like a nervous teenager. Early and probably in their pants.

You should definitely try it though. Maybe something will click with you that just went over my head. Maybe you love the fact that you’re an astronaut (?) with a jetpack flying around guiding water into a funnel. Seems good on paper maybe, but this is not the game for me.

Game Score: 6/10.

Download a free demo of the game here.