Get lost in the forest, upset a fairy by touching something you shouldn’t have, and explore the forest to find what’s gone missing. Check our Potata: Fairy Flower review!

 

Reveal secrets, uncover hidden treasure, and don’t forget to save the world!

Potata is a puzzle-platformer adventure story about a little girl’s magical journey through a world filled with good and evil. Play as the oddly-named Potata, a novice witch who is still getting a handle on her powers. Help Potata save her village from stinky spores, evil mushrooms, spiders, and other dark forest spirits.

The game world is inhabited by fantastic creatures, each with their own personality and story. Learn what secrets your village is hiding and make new friends — or maybe new enemies.
Gameplay involves traditional platformer mechanics, puzzles, boss battles, conversations with village inhabitants, and forest exploration. Some careful thought is necessary, and the hardest moments may leave you racking your brain to find the solution.

Potata: Fairy Flower is a new puzzle platformer in which you play as the titular Potata, a novice witch who is sent into the forest to collect ingredients to help her sick fox. Along her travels, she stumbles upon a flower that belonged to a fairy, a flower that she shouldn’t have touched. Now she embarks on a journey to find the petals from the flower to give it back to the fairy. You will have some sidequests from people that you can complete to help them along the way. Will you make the most of your journey as you right as many wrongs as possible?

The majority of the gameplay will have you platforming while exploring the forest. There is some combat, but the main focus will be on the platforming and the puzzle solving. There are many hidden areas with extra currency lying around. I found myself exploring every nook and cranny to find as much of it as I could. The offbeat areas that you find definitely have some of the more difficult platforming in the game. These were the parts I enjoyed the most since jumps had to be perfect or else. I would make mistakes, but when I got through them, it felt great. Jumping does feel a bit floaty, but once I get the hang of it, I was able to make more difficult jumps.

 

You will find some puzzle areas in the game that have blocks keeping you from progressing. You’ll generally need to activate the puzzle board by finding its switch, and playing a puzzle so that the wall will come down. There are three main types of puzzles, including one where you have to click boxes and get all the ones with the dots lit up green. When you click a box, all the ones around it will activate, but it’s tricky since, if they don’t have a dot, they’ll turn red, which is bad. The next one has you taking tetromino pieces and placing them on a board so that you properly fill the space using all the pieces. The last one is the classic pipes puzzle in which you have a grid of pieces that rotate, and they have pipes that will transport something from point A to point B.

I enjoyed all of them since they were a nice break from the platforming, but they did feel a bit off as if they didn’t fit into the whole narrative. Nothing in the story really explained why these walls and puzzles were established, which was not ideal. They can get a bit obtuse occasionally as well, but a little bit of extra time should help you find the solution. Don’t think for a moment that the game’s colorful presentation means it’s going to be a walk in the park!

 

The currency you collect throughout the journey as you explore high and low can be used for different things, but the majority will be used for saving your game and for getting some extra hints for puzzles. I was not a fan of saves being tied to having to collect enough currency so that your progress was not lost. I also thought that checkpoints could have been better since when I died, I would end up way back in spots I had already explored and had to start all over again.

The game does look great thanks to its art style, which makes the game look as if a fairy tale was coming to life on your screen. Potata looks great with its solid animation, and the world and characters around her fit the same motif. Everything blends visually and works really well together. I liked the music in the background as well, as it added to the world without distracting too much, which is what I’m looking for in games like these. I ran the game on Handheld Game and on my big screen TV with no issues, but everything definitely looks better on a bigger screen thanks to its colorful presentation.

 

I had a good time with Potata: Fairy Flower. It’s not the deepest puzzle platformer, but I found the world engaging, and it did a good effort in having me want to help Potata complete her journey. The art style is great, creating a believable fantasy world. My biggest concern is that the puzzles don’t seem to mix well with the overall motif.

Disclaimer
This Potata: Fairy Flower review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by OverGamez.