Game Reviews

The Bearded Hero

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iOS
| The Bearded Hero
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The Bearded Hero
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iOS
| The Bearded Hero

I find myself at odds with The Bearded Hero.

It's a game that looks a bit like a claymation. It features an interesting take on maze-navigation puzzles. It's full of beards.

And yet it just hasn't grabbed me like I expected it to. It actually feels kind of flat.

It's not the beard on the outside that counts

The point of each level is to draw a path for the titular hero so he can collect all of the available rings. You might also have to collect keys to unlock a door, or pass through teleporters or gateways. And you're definitely going to have to swap colours.

Most levels in The Bearded Hero are full of nasty critters called Evilings. They don't actively seek out the hero, but if he gets too close to one that matches his colour he's a goner.

It's important to bump the hero into special colour-switching blocks quite often. The toss-up is that certain blocks are impassable for certain colours, so you need to do things in the right order.

When you mix all of these elements together you end up with a fairly interesting puzzler. Unfortunately though, it never really becomes all that compelling.

It's the beard on the inside

Those clay-styled visuals that initially caught my attention are pretty disappointing. The background for the menus looks the part but when you're playing it all looks rather bland.

I'm also not fond of the camera zooming in whenever I trace a path. I understand the need for players to see where they're drawing, but it's so close that it makes plotting out long paths a lot more taxing than it should be.

The Bearded Hero is a puzzler that never really gets beyond decent. Trying to figure out which paths to take can be interesting for a few levels, but after that you'll probably start to wonder what else you can play.

The Bearded Hero

The Bearded Hero is a decent enough puzzle game, but it doesn’t really wow
Score
Rob Rich
Rob Rich
Rob Rich is the editor of 148Apps.com