Splash Dino

Splash Dino is a puzzle game in which you place obstacles to guide a wooden ball into the water.

I recently reviewed a game called Professor Goodboi’s Ballistics which had the same principle. It features easy levels but with a large panel of mechanics that make the game fun.
Splash Dino is the total opposite. There are 4 elements : crates, triangles, bombs + destructive blocks and falling platforms, that’s all.
For games like that, there are two possibilities: the puzzles are either repetitive and filler, or the dev exactly knows how to exploit the potential of its mechanics.
Fortunately, the latter is true for Splash Dino.

There are 100 levels and most of the solutions feel unique despite the low variety and number of elements you’re given (each level has up to 3 items to place).
The game is hard, even very hard sometimes. It requires you to study exactly how the physics of the game works and craft very precise solutions.

Absurd precision like that might seem like a chore, and of course it can be frustrating. But that’s also interesting in my opinion, it doesn’t feel like you’re solving classic puzzles and it’s incredibly gratifying.
You often find multiple possible setups (of course a lot of them are actually impossible) and they all use your ingeniosity rather than straight logic and analysis.
You rarely know what’s the correct solution because the official solution is often insane. So what you come up with really feels like a battle against the game, and I love that feeling.

Of course, there are hints if you really have no idea. I used 4 or 5 of them in total, they tell you the general area where each item has to be placed.
It may sound like it just gives you the solution, but it doesn’t. These areas are rather big, so you still need to think.
And if a level is so hard that you cannot do it even with a hint, you can still skip it.

However, if you skip a level, you can’t play it anymore. That seems stupid, and it is.
This game is good but suffers from basic flaws that would ruin it for a lot of people :
– The reason you can’t replay a level is because there’s simply no level selection menu. It absolutely needs to be added.
– Each time you try a solution, the items go back in the top left corner instead of just being left where they were. That’s really annoying and prevent players from making micro adjustments. In a game that requires such precision, that has to be changed.
– The dino points system is a bit useless I think. I didn’t say it, but getting a hint or skipping a level actually costs dino points (you gain 1 for each level completed). You could argue that limiting the number of hints would force players to only use them when completely stuck.
And I’m fine with that, I guess keeping the dino points system to only restrict the hints is fine. But level selection + free skip is a must.

With a few adjustments, Splash Dino could actually be a very solid game. It’s a shame to have such blatant flaws, because lots of efforts went into the puzzles to really offer a creative challenge.
But in the current state, I don’t think a lot of people would have the patience to play it more than 1-2 hours.

---

Developer: Catlands Games
Publisher: Catlands Games
Platforms: Steam – Windows, Android
Release Date: May 6, 2023