Tempopo review

Tempopo’s greatest strength is that its puzzles never frustrate me. Even when I’m stuck on them for an embarrassingly long time, trying to slot in one final piece to successfully direct adorable pink blobs—the titular Tempopo—as they rhythmically hop from tile to tile, gathering musical flowers and reaching the goal.

Part of that is thanks to the fact that Witch Beam’s newest game doesn’t pressure me to speed through each level at lightning speed. There’s no timer, no limit to the hints I can use, and I can reset each puzzle as many times as I want. It’s a wonderfully calm puzzler through and through, but if you’re looking for the fantastic visual storytelling seen in the developer’s last title—2021’s Unpacking—you unfortunately won’t find it here.

There is a vague semblance of story, mind. After young girl Hana majorly botches a concert, her garden’s musical flowers get scattered across 60 different levels. Her job is to get them back alongside her Tempopo, using different commands to direct them into each flower.

Commands include redirecting Tempopo in fixed directions, turning them into blocks that other Tempopo can traverse, pushing blocks around or even smashing them to create new paths or blockades. The game throws all of them at me pretty fast, where I was expecting them to drip-feed them to me as the difficulty increased.

Each level only gives a fixed amount of certain commands, and most of them are of the smashing or flying variety. In my first 60 levels with Tempopo I was rarely given the directional arrow commands to use, and it was hard to pinpoint where the difficulty curve was going up and whether I was actually improving at my puzzle-solving skills.

Complexity does come in through more intricate level designs, forcing me to spin the level around and inspect each tile from all angles, as well as increasing the number of Tempopo I have to keep an eye on as they hop around. They don’t all actually have to make it to the goal—only the ones holding flowers—so knowing when it’s okay to let one fall off a cliff or hop straight into a thorny vine is also surprisingly important.

There is a bit of cleverness through just how I have to use each command as well, though the game never really makes it clear when I can use them to bend the rules a little bit. One command that is used to push blocks can also be used to push other Tempopo across gaps, for example, something I only found out completely by accident. A little nudge in the right direction would’ve been appreciated.

Pop-py music

The game’s union of puzzler and rhythm works incredibly well, with composer Jeff van Dyck soundtracking serene, unobtrusive melodies for when I’m in the planning stages of each puzzle, before letting the music swell into an upbeat symphony as I play each one out successfully.

Hearing Tempopo bounce along each block scratches an itch deep in my brain, and I can’t help but tap my foot along in rhythm. It’s not just my round, pink friends who contribute to the soundscape, either. Some levels have reanimated skulls who eat anything in their path—my Tempopo included—satisfyingly crunching along the tiles in a way no ASMR mukbanger ever could.

Progressing through levels and collecting flowers even lets me pop them back into my garden wherever I feel like in order to create my own melodies. Each tile can house up to four of the same flower, and I can create songs with harmonising roses, percussion florets and harp orchids.

It all further folds into Tempopo’s pursuit of the relaxing and cosy, and every 15 levels whisks me to Hana’s garden to plant all my collected flowers so she can sing a melody. I didn’t spend much time in the mode outside of when I was prompted to, but I’m sure the more musically inclined will have a good time creating different melodies.

Unfortunately, outside of Hana’s songs, there’s relatively little narrative to be found in Tempopo. As someone who adores Unpacking—that gut-wrenching moment when trying to find a space for my degree lives rent-free in my head—I was hoping to see some of that incredible subtle visual storytelling throughout Tempopo.

Ultimately that doesn’t seem like it was a priority here, which is fine, but I couldn’t help but wish for a little something as I flicked through each level with relatively little to do in-between. I’m not asking for grand cutscenes or never-ending text boxes here, but something more frequent to break up the puzzling would have been appreciated.

As much as I enjoyed Tempopo’s puzzles—I don’t want to downplay their challenge here, and I even had to switch difficulty modes down to Adventure, which highlights which blocks require a command, on one or two levels—I couldn’t help but feel like something was missing. Something to elevate it beyond a relatively solid puzzler.

Early bloomer

I think Tempopo’s biggest problem is it throws all of its tools at you straight away, and then doesn’t do a whole lot to build upon them. It makes many of its original 60 levels—there are additional levels once you finish the main game, though I’ve yet to dabble in them—feel samey at times, even when they’re not.

But despite that, Tempopo is still a good, robust puzzler. It’s the model Steam Deck game, too. Part of my time spent reviewing Tempopo was while I had the flu, and it proved to be the perfect game to lie on my couch with while fighting whatever nasty germs were ripping through my system. I can imagine this’ll be a great one to tackle a couple of levels at a time before bed or on a long weekend morning, challenging your brain just enough in short bursts that you can pick it up and put it down again 10 minutes later.

If you’re looking for a nice, slow-burn puzzler, Tempopo is one you should definitely keep an eye on. Engaging and relaxing all at once, each level is a joy to figure out. However, if you’re searching for pockets of Witch Beam’s excellent storytelling, it’s sadly taken a pretty major backseat here.