Platform: Nintendo Switch
Publisher: Winterwire Games
Developer: Winterwire Games
Medium: Digital
Players: 1
Online: No
ESRB: E
I was ready to love Power Sink from the moment I saw its Steam store page. It’s a 3D puzzle-platformer set in a gorgeous underwater world, in which you play as a diver (who looks kind of like Bioshock’s Big Daddy, but cute and without a giant drill) trying to restore power to an ever-deeper series of platforms. Between its general aesthetic and the bits of platforming in its trailer, I was sold.
And, to some extent, Power Sink delivered on my high expectations. In action, it looks just as good as its screenshots. Moving underwater is a joy; even though the jumps are a little floaty, in this case it feels right. Even though you can’t swim from one platform to another, movement is fluid enough that it just feels right.
The problem is that Power Sink’s levels might be a bit too ambitious for their own good. While the first few levels are easy enough – you go to an obvious spot, you restore power, and you’re on to the next level – as soon as things start getting more complicated, the game occasionally verges on unforgivingly difficult. It’s not uncommon to fail a level because you hit or missed a seemingly inconsequential switch at the beginning, and backtracking is useless because you really need to start all over again. Similarly, because some of the levels are so large, it becomes very easy to lose track of what you’re doing and where you’re supposed to be going, and there’s no way to stop and look back and figure out what more you need to do.
But it’s hard to really dislike Power Sink, even with those wildly varying levels of difficulty. It’s a gorgeous game set in a well-imagined world, and even if its gameplay isn’t as absorbing as its environments, it’s still a solid puzzle-platformer.
Winterwire Games provided us with a Power Sink PC code for review purposes.
