Kubo’s and the Two Strings is an upcoming stop motion animated movie that’s getting a lot of people excited, and like many movies it has an app game to help generate interest. Not knowing mix about the movie since there has been little footage released we dived in completely blind with Kubo’s Quest and found an interesting game.
Kubo’s Quest is a match three game similar to Candy Crush and other titles, but it has various different types of levels and rewards throughout its story. The basic level is a simple point based run where you are given the ability to match similar pictures to earn points until you reach the specified goal and you’re then able to continue. There are also timed levels where instead of a point requirement you are tasked with granting requests of villagers to either impress them or make them happy. These requests are for you to match up a certain number of a specific shape and once you complete all the requests you will complete the level. Finally there are battle and boss battle levels in which you will have to match swords for attacks, hearts to heal your character’s, and blue orbs to charge a special move. The regular battles are simple, but boss battles crank up the difficulty and may require several plays to complete. You are able to have up to three origami fighters participate in each battle. These fighters are obtained through chance and some of the early game provides them for free. Each origami fighter has an elemental attribute from a list of elements that all counteract each other in battle. This means that you can use type advantages to dispatch does more easily. However, I found with the first boss battle that when I was not able to line up an attack, heal or charge my special I would just line up regular pictures, which would somehow lead to the boss stacking attacks and healing itself from the new pictures that fell after my turn. It was extremely frustrating to wear the boss down only for one of his turns to eliminate my fighter and restore the boss to full health.
Visually Kubo’s Quest is unique and pulls images of characters from the movie as well as backdrops to make it look exactly like the art style of the movie itself. The music is interesting and made the experience overall more enjoyable.
Overall, Kubo’s Quest had some interesting features even if the difficulty spikes for the first boss. It also only allows you to play five times in a row unless you complete a level for the first time which grants one extra play. The plays recharge after some time, but it does break up gameplay. So there are some frustrations, but if you’re interested in the movie or the gameplay you should give Kubo’s Quest a try!
