Potata: Fairy Flower by Potata Company
Potata: Fairy Flower is a side-scrolling adventure game combining traditional platforming with puzzles that lean more towards relaxing than taxing. This is backed up with a cutesy narrative and a colorful, robust art style that evokes a wholesome fairy tale feel. A range of dazzling environments and charming characters help to create a robust adventuring experience.
Potata is the daughter of a witch – and a young witch herself. Her adventure begins when her fox grows sickly and her mother requires ingredients from the forest to help brew a medicine. Potata sets out to find said ingredients and finds herself facing off against mischievous fairies; exploring dark, twisted forests; and leaping through deadly traps.
Afloat on Gossamer Fairy Wings
The platforming of Potata is silky, for the most part, with variable jump heights and floaty physics that are fairly forgiving. I find platformers tend to range between rigid, snappy affairs and this more kind of airy experience. Which of the two is preferable tends to be a subjective question, but generally, I enjoy the more precise action offered by the likes of Celeste. That being said, the slower platforming here fits snugly with the puzzle-focused adventure on offer.
Potata’s puzzles range from relatively simple to mildly challenging. Many involve applying the correct item for the situation using the game’s inventory system; one early obstacle has a rather toothy creature blocking the way which must be sedated with a particular kind of berry.
Never a Dull Moment
These familiar puzzles are supplemented with larger, more time-consuming tasks that act as mini-games to break up the action. These include a switch-based game where specific tiles need to be lit up in order to progress and a shape-matching task with Tetris-style blocks. These are fairly straightforward and there is an option to buy your way through the more challenging puzzles with the in-game collectible currency.
Potata is broken up by a variety of bosses, and these provide a good, solid ramp up in challenge. I noticed that animations for these are not always as seamless as the art itself, but this is a small issue, and the difficulty spike provided by these moments is a welcome one.
Potata herself has a few tools to deal with all of these threats, ranging from the various items she can pick up along her journey to a trusty sword.
Beguiled by Fairyland
Visually Potata is beautiful and its whimsical fairy tale aesthetics are instantly appealing. As is sometimes the case with this kind of artistic quality, it does show up imperfect animations a little more starkly, but for the most part, Potata is a gorgeous game that presents its setting elegantly.
The music, too, is rich and provides a warm, Celtic backdrop to the dynamic visual offering.
Potata is a gentle and calming platformer to get lost in. Its levels are fairly forgiving, although there are more than a few challenging moments later on and the puzzles can offer a few brain-teasers here and there.
The sheer whimsy of the setting, aesthetics and story is especially endearing and this is all supported by the solid art and music packed into Potata. This is a delightful platforming adventure that should offer a worthwhile experience to fans of both puzzles and pit-hopping shenanigans.
Potata: Flower Fairy is available via Steam.
[xrr rating=”4/5″]
Watch the official trailer for Potata: Flower Fairy below:
