You are given a puzzle, like crossing a river or scaring off a bully, and you solve it by typing almost any word you can think of and watching the game summon that object into the world. A rope, a helicopter, or a dinosaur are all valid answers if you can think to type them, which makes solving puzzles feel like a word game as much as an adventure. It rewards creativity more than any single correct answer.
Gameplay video
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Screenshots & review notes
The verdict
A clever premise that still delights, even if the puzzle design around it hasn't always kept pace with the wordplay gimmick.
The mechanics
Typing out absurd solutions never stops being funny, though the interface can feel fiddly translated to a controller.
Presentation
Simple, colorful visuals keep the focus squarely on your imagination rather than on spectacle, which suits the concept well.
Staying power
Great for short bursts of creative problem-solving, especially with kids, though it lacks the depth to sustain marathon sessions.
Frames captured from the gameplay video above; notes are our own take on the game.
What it's like to play
You control a small character named Maxwell standing in a 2D world full of puzzles, like a locked door or a fire blocking a path, and the way you solve every single one is by typing a word on a keyboard that appears on screen. Type ladder and one drops in front of you, type jetpack and you can fly, type in an adjective like giant or fiery to change how an object behaves, and the game accepts an enormous range of words. In your first ten minutes you will likely be told to get an object stuck in a tree, and you will realize you can solve it a dozen different ways, from summoning a bird to conjuring a helicopter.
Most of your time is spent walking between connected puzzle areas on a map, solving whatever the level asks for using whatever objects you can think to type, and rewards for finishing puzzles let you unlock more of the map. There is a second included game bundled here with a superhero license, which adds a simple story and lets you build your own hero, but the core activity of typing your way through problems is the same. Because there is rarely one correct answer, difficulty comes less from precision and more from creativity, and a full playthrough of either game can take ten hours or more if you take your time exploring solutions.
Session to session it works best in short bursts, since typing on a controller can feel slow, and kids in particular enjoy testing silly combinations just to see what happens. What may frustrate an adult player is that a handful of reliable objects, like a rope or a ladder, solve most puzzles once you find them, so the novelty can wear thin. If you are looking for something that mixes reading and problem solving for a younger player, this is genuinely useful as well as fun.