Blow - XBox 360 Community Game

Review by www.GamerOutfit.com

Rating:

Use wind to guide your bubbles safely to the exit. Journey though the magical canopy of the ‘Great Tree’ collecting ‘Flames’ with help from the Faeries. Experience 70 handcrafted levels and infinite procedurally generated levels for endless variety.

Blow Box Art

The Good

• Unique gameplay
• Relaxing game

Needs Improvement

• Slow pace may be too slow

Blow, developed by David Flook, is a very unique game in that you spend your time trying to push bubbles from one side of the game area to another while passing through flowers along the way to open up the exit.  You start the game by placing a fan that attaches to nearby trees.  When you place the fan you also are able to rotate it and see where bubbles that come across it's path will blow to.  Bubbles appear on the left side of the screen and every so gently (slowly) fall.  If they cross the path of a fan they will blow accordingly.  The goal is to blow them into flowers that need to bud.  When a bubble moves across a flower it will open up and let you focus on opening the next flower.  Once all flowers are open you can call forth a King bubble and blow him to the exit to finish the level.

The tutorial for Blow is very well done and shows you exactly how to play the game.  You will barely get past it in Trial mode but have plenty of time in the unlocked version.  Overall the graphics are nice and soothing and have special touches such as the glow around the pixies in the forest (that swarm around the King bubble for example.)  The music is soothing but borderline annoying.

Blow is nice in that it's a unique game and I can't say there is anything like it on the XBox Marketplace.  The area it may have some trouble with is the typical audience member who buys XBox Arcade games.  I doubt the typical user will have the patience to play the game for long as it is very slow paced (to start with at least.)  The pace along with the music, graphics, and gameplay are better suited for a relaxation aid than an adrenaline filled game experience.  That's not a bad thing if you are trying to relax from a stressful day but it may put you to sleep in the middle of a gaming day.

Blow is available now on the Marketplace for 400 points.