Pureya Review

It’ll probably take you longer to read this review than play a round of Pureya. This collection of rapid-fire mini games wastes little time in getting us into the action. It’s slight but fun in bursts, although it does feel like there should be something more to it. 

The basic premise is that we’re collecting marbles to drop in a pachinko machine by playing a succession of mini-games that last 10 seconds each. It’s very WarioWare in its approach, never really explaining anything to us, instead just throwing one thing after another at us and expecting us to figure it out. 

These games – all controlled with just left and right inputs – range from moving monkeys along some vines while avoiding falling coconuts, to snowboarding, jumping a penguin over gaps, flying a paper plane, and much more. They are simple by necessity, and as we pass rounds successfully they gradually move faster and throw more hazards at us to stop us collecting the marbles.

After a full round, we’re back to the pachinko machine to drop the marbles in from both sides. We’re aiming for certain points on the machine, and getting a handful of marbles to hit the target unlocks a random prize. It’s here we gain access to more mini-games (once we’ve collected all four pieces of an image) and various collectibles. There are 30 games in total, but collecting them is quite slow depending on the RNG of the prize choice.

It really is simple to play, but my main point of contention with Pureya is that even in the limited number of rounds we initially have access to (6 or 7 at best) there’s a large portion that are, frankly, not fun. One sees us moving a ship back and forth as a ship in the background fires cannonballs at us. In each shot, three balls come out, one of which is a marble. The balls go off screen when fired and then reappear from the top left corner is random fashion, and on the slower speeds it’s tricky to be in the right place, while on the faster speed it’s almost impossible to accurately avoid the cannon balls, meaning it’s a round that we hardly ever get an marbles in. The RC Car/football one is equally annoying to play, and the bouncing ball game is yet another waste of time in terms of managing to get more than one or two marbles. 

I do enjoy the paper plane, the monkey, and the snowboard and eagle flying ones though, because these ones require more skill than luck to get a good amount of marbles. And one of the unlockable ones I’ve played is rotating a satellite around planet that fires missiles and lasers at us, and is quite a fun challenge. 

But I just don’t know how much more time I will find myself putting in to unlock more. As I say, the RNG, as well as the unpredictable physics of the pachinko machine, mean we might play several full rounds without unlocking anything at all. And because of the limited initial amount of levels, it can get tedious quite quickly. Short bursts are absolutely the way to play, and I’ll dip in and out here and there, but ideally there’d be a more reliable way to increase the roster of games faster. We can at least play individual games in a high score fashion, but that’d be more for local competition with friends than any sort of progression help.

Conclusion

While there are a few mini-games here that are fun to play, the slow unlocking of more levels, the randomness of the rewards, and there being a couple of dud games in a small selection early on puts a downer in Pureya for us.

This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.

Want to keep up to date with the latest Xt reviews, Xt opinions and Xt content? Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Good
  • A couple of fun mini-games
  • Simple, immediate gameplay
Bad
  • Small selection of initial levels, too many of which are not fun to play
  • Slow to unlock new games
  • Random rewards mean we could play for ages without anything worthwhile to show for it
5
Average
Written by
I've been gaming since Spy vs Spy on the Master System, growing up as a Sega kid before realising the joy of multi-platform gaming. These days I can mostly be found on smaller indie titles, the occasional big RPG and doing poorly at Rainbow Six: Siege. Gamertag: Enaksan

Leave a Reply

Lost Password

Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.

Skip to toolbar