Potata by the Indie studio of the same name Potata, is an adorable, side scroller platformer game, and although not complex, this game will challenge you with its jump sequences and puzzles. You will be tested in a skill of wit to figure out who is actually a friend and who is foe; wanting to cause yourself and your village harm?

Potata, your main character, is a young girl who carries a wooden sword by her side and for no apparent reason appears to be a black sheep of her village, having no friends, no companions and who even the grown-ups want nothing to do with. Potata is a fledgling witch who doesn’t study or try, she dreams of adventure not boring books. Finding a fairy who wants a special flower, Potata must gather it’s petal by travelling through many beautiful landscapes.

I must admit, she kind of annoyed me too at first, with her poor attitude and laziness in her first quest to help HER own sick fox. I was made to feel somewhat miserable about her situation, which in turn spurred me to keep playing to see if I could become the hero or even powerful witch.

No tutorial is offered but the controls were simple enough with a jump, swing of a sword, on occasions you are equipped with a special bomb that you can aim and fire but aside from that you’re set. The enemies are simple and aside from the boss battles, you mainly fight little, cute insects that have a shielded face.

Although I played the game on PC, I used a controller and found the controls simple and easy to handle, the levels are simple yet challenging; for example, using flowers as platforms to get higher but collapse down and rebloom meaning timing is key. Also, green slime bombs detonate if you go too close, creating timed events where you have to get to safety before losing all 3 hearts. Enemies like spiders and jumping fish cause annoyance more than anything else, and if you haven’t paid attention they can appear out of nowhere.

The game is mainly an adventure platformer that has some tricky puzzles. Annoyingly, the first puzzle has no instruction; one of the other girls from the village makes you feel stupid for not knowing how to solve it so you pay her to help. if I’d been told what the point of the puzzle was, I would have figured it out by myself anyway.

As you journey around, you can read scrolls that had been blown across the land, this gives you insight to some of the characters’ backstories. I didn’t feel like any of this helped the story and a few even scrolls were just more horrid things about our poor protagonist. I did enjoy gathering the stones throughout the levels, which you could spend at save points. Your first save was free but if you needed a second save you have to pay, so start collecting. These stones can also be traded by characters for help or items, as well.

The landscapes are very lovely from stunning immersive, cartoon forests to muddy swamps to even way up in the sky where you and use the fluffy clouds as platforms. Potata being the gorgeous, little red-haired girl she is, is incredibly detailed for a cartoon game. All during your journey you have a relaxing Celtic folk music soundtrack playing, to be honest I felt a bit like Merida from Brave. Also, the sound effects were spot on, a whoosh sound when you swung your sword, the grind of stone against stone and while walking the village the pigs wandering around could be heard snorting.

Overall, I had a lot of fun with this game; a very sweet and cute game that challenges you and makes you think, but also gives a feeling of success and joy when you finally beat a level. If I see anything new from this developer, I will be keen to give it a go. I felt a great sense of need to beat the game and have Potata do the right thing and be seen as a good person, like I know she truly is…maybe.

Written by: Jordy Lowe