Lead the Furmins through over 100 ingeniously designed and visually stunning levels. Furmins provides hours of brain-twisting fun for fans of physics-based puzzle games.

Guide all the Furmins to the basket (level exit) by re-arranging a variety of items and using bumpers with well-timed precision. Wisely place items to create pathways and physical chain reactions which help the Furmins reach their goal while earning Star points to unlock new Levels.

Furmins is a puzzle game from developer Housemarque, who has also released gems like Super Stardust HD (one of my all-time favorite arcade game), Dead Nation and Outland. This game had been released last year on iOS platforms and has since been released on the PS3 and Vita systems.

At its core, Furmins is a puzzle game in which your goal is to bring the Furmins (Lemming-like creatures) to the goal. If you played the early PSN game Elefunk, you’ll feel right at home in Furmins!

Furmins – Launch Trailer

Gameplay

The time spent in Furmins is mostly used for adapting the level so that the Furmins roll (or are propelled) to their goal using the built-in physics engine. Typically, a few pieces (generally between one and four) can be moved using the Vita touch controls and placed on the level so that the Furmins will roll to the goal under the target time – while collecting candy. Often, there are jumps (like in the picture below) in which you need to tap the Vita’s rear pad when the Furmins pass over them to make them bounce higher (similar to Tearaway).

Gameplay-wise, you can take all the time you want to think about the levels when you are in “Design mode”, and you can even test some parts of your course when you think a segment is okay by pressing Play. You can then test if the whole course is ready, and then enhance the course after you saw the result.

There are almost 100 levels in the game, and they are separated in 7 different main “worlds” along with a bonus world. On top of that, there is purchasable DLC which adds even more content to the game. Each level has a three-star objective: the first one is awarded if all the Furmins reach their destination, a second one for collecting all the candies on the screen (that one is hard), and the last one is awarded when the time objective is met (that one is even harder). The game considers the level as completed when at least one star is earned, and you can come back later to get the other stars.

The game is very well balanced, and in under around 2 hours, I had already achieved all the stars of the two firsts worlds. I noticed that the difficulty ramps in the following worlds, but it is still manageable. A very neat feature is that reaching all the stars for a level is not mandatory, nor is it to do the levels in any given order. You can skip to almost every level relatively early in the game (unlocking worlds require only a few stars), which means that you can try the last world even if you didn’t finish the first one.

Final Thoughts

Furmins is a pretty cool physics puzzler that features an addictive gameplay with a well-balanced difficulty. While going through the levels, I noticed that I ended up spending more time fine-tuning my platform design to reach the time objective instead of figuring out how to get through each level, but it’s a minor annoyance.

[review pros=”Addictive and fair puzzle gameplay
Good price point for the content
Levels can be played in any order” cons=”Fine-tuning takes more time than figuring the puzzles
” score=75]

Cost: $5.99

PSN Game size: 38MB

You can purchase Furmins from the PSN.

Disclaimer

This review is based on a copy provided by Beatsharpers.