Krinkle Krusher is a tower defense title developed my Ilusis Interactive Graphics. In this game, you play as…a magic glove, of all things. You have to defend your Kingdom from these weird creatures called Krinkles. You do this by casting various spells.
One of the things that the developer should be proud about is the variety of creatures, and they all have separate abilities to keep the player on edge. One ability that comes to mind is where the creature can absorb your spell. All of these different creatures require different spells to destroy them and this is where the intensity comes in. As they march ever closer to your defences (a wall), you must remember which spell is more effective against which creature. You then have to remember the button you need to press to get that spell out. All of this needs to be done without fault otherwise before you know it, they are relentlessly attacking your defences and you’ve near enough lost the game. In that sense, this game could be seen as challenging if you’re new to the genre, which I was. However, as I’m sure that this game was primarily made with children in mind, it isn’t really difficult once you know which buttons do what and you have played a few rounds. In that case, it wouldn’t keep many people hooked into playing for long periods of time.
Once you defeat all enemies for that round, you will be ranked out of three stars. If you manage to get all three stars, you will get a gem, which can be used to upgrade the spells. These gems can also be used to increase the strength of the walls protecting the town, which in turn will allow you more time to get the monsters before the defence is broken down. I can see that the developers thought that this upgrading system may make the game more enjoyable, and it may for some people who are fans of tower defence titles, but for me I didn’t really find it all that appealing.
The game is visually pleasing for what it is and I never ran into any glitch or hiccup with my time of playing other than the odd stutter, but for an indie game it actually ran well. I will say however, that sometimes the gameplay felt a little bit clunky in that when I moved the cursor below a creature and used a spell to destroy it, nothing would happen. You need to be very precise where you cast the spell because there isn’t much leeway. You can’t help but feel that this is really a mobile phone game designed for touchscreens. Maybe incorporating a grid like Plants vs. Zombies would’ve helped the experience. It would definitely make for placing spells much easier and precise.
Summary
All in all, I definitely won’t be playing this game again because of the constant repetition. Console gamers want experiences they enjoy for long periods of time. At least when I sit down to play a game, I play it for hours on end. These are the experiences that appeal to console gamers. Krinkle Krusher is essentially a title designed for touchscreens that you might enjoy in very shorts bursts. It really doesn’t have a place on consoles unless you have very young children or are looking to play something very casual between commercials. That’s not to say that nobody would enjoy it though, this is just my opinion. I can see where the game has potential in the upgrading system and the variety of monsters, but other than that, there isn’t anything else good that I can say about it to be honest.
I hate saying this about games because I know a lot of time and effort goes into the development process but it just doesn’t fit consoles well. It might be visually pleasing and a rather unique take on a tower defense game, but the gameplay is repetitious and frustrating. It failed to keep me hooked for over 15 minutes at a time.
Tomek Zbigniew Sobieralski was a community contributor to ICXM, writing 2 articles in 2016 covering game reviews. ICXM operated as an independent Xbox and Windows gaming outlet through the run-up to Xbox One S and Project Scorpio, plus the broader Windows 10 gaming push, drawing from a rotating bench of editorial volunteers. They post on X as @Sobski117.