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Game Review by Sean O’Leary
Game Rating = 3/5 Balls

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As an avid gamer, I’ve come across various games here and there that emulate and improve upon games that have come previously, and this holds especially true in the world of casual games. Xeno Sola is no exception to this.

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The game plays very much like the game pipe dream, which was released for various consoles and PC’s once video games first began to become household standards. It works like this; You and three other players -or computer controlled players, in the case of the demo version- compete to get the highest score while working together to build a space station. The game starts with one piece already on the field and each player takes turns placing a new piece that must attach to another specific part that has already been placed. certain parts are worth more points than others. Also each player can “bet” on a piece they’re placing so that when a certain part of the space station is completed, the player increases the amount of points gained by x1, x3, or x5. The demo has a time limit of 5 minutes per game, and I am unaware if that is a changeable option in the full version.

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It sounds more complex than it actually is, but the game has a learning curve that is steeper than most casual games I’ve come across, and I did not find the tutorial helpful at all.

My first impression of Xeno Sola was that it had really nifty character art. The art-style is very anime/manga oriented, and reminiscent of Fred Perry’s “Gold Diggers” or anything by the now famous Adam Warren. In fact, I’m fairly certain I’ve seen the artist’s work before, but can’t state his name off the top of my head with out hours of extensive research.

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Unfortunately, the impressive art became a bigger-build up to a heavier let-down.

The sound is fair at best. There’s little variety to it, and so it quickly becomes tuned out as mere background noise. Casual games commonly are not known for being sound or music heavy games, but Xeno Sola seems to take a step back in that category sacrificing sound for graphics.

I did enjoy the competitive nature of the game, but figuring out which pieces were worth more points was not terribly obvious, and I had to discover it through trial and error, as the tutorial of the game did not cover that. Furthermore, when the timer runs out on the game demo you’re simply dumped back onto the start screen, with no notification of who the winner of the previous game was. Again, this maybe be different in the full version, but it did nothing to impress me in the demo.

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I’d like to say that this is a game for the whole family, and it’s true that there’s no offensive content. The Sci-Fi nature of the game, though, along with the need to identify small pieces and maneuver them quickly into place and the numerical scoring system really doesn’t strike me as a game that young children would understand. The cartoony nature of the graphics may also turn off some adults as well, thus, in my mind anyway, teens and pre-teens are the only household members who would find it truly holds their interest. And even then, given the attention span of kids that age, I can’t see it occupying them for more than a few weeks before they begin nagging their parents for something new.

All in all, it’s not a terrible game. It plays the way it’s designed to, and if you’re patient enough to figure out the scoring system, you may get more out of it than I did. But personally, it’s not a game I would purchase without playing the demo first.

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System Requirements

1 GHz Celeron or better
OpenGL-compatible video
800×600 min. resolution
256 MB RAM

Xeno Clone created Xeno Sola.

Tags: Board Games, Puzzle Games //