Pretty Girls Escape PLUS is another fantastic puzzle game from the friendly folks at Zoo Corporation featuring some well endowed anime girls.
The puzzle design in this game is actually fantastic. I usually blaze through most of their games in about two hours or so unless it has a challenge mode. The later puzzles in Escape PLUS require more thinking and strategy. I was actually stuck on a few levels and had to come back to them later to get past them.
The puzzle mechanics are quite simple and intuitive but the way new mechanics are layered in make them much more challenging to solve. The main mechanic is one that would be familiar to most gamers; clicking on two or more adjacent blocks of the same color removes them from the playing field and the rest fall straight down. This process is repeated until the portraits of the anime protagonists can escape from the level by falling through the doors at the very bottom of the level, hence the title of the game Pretty Girls Escape.
The game would have been simple if this was the only mechanic but they add in things like immovable blocks, indestructible blocks, blocks with spikes that end the game if the portraits touch them, pistons that move every time you destroy blocks, and so forth. One neat level that I was stuck on used the pistons, one key, and four colored blocks. It was a very simple puzzle in but the sequence in which you moved the blocks made a whole world of difference.
Puzzles like these felt great to solve and you could see the intentional design behind the puzzle and how the layout pointed to the solution. Escape PLUS probably has the best designed puzzles from Zoo Corporation so far from all the games I’ve played from them and I’ve played most of them.
The game also has drawings of some buxom anime women and while I’m not the biggest fan of that aspect of the game, the puzzles are definitely fantastic.
Additional Info
Steam Store Page : https://store.steampowered.com/app/2670340/Pretty_Girls_Escape_PLUS/
Review Score: 0 reviews as of this writing (12/11/23)
Developer: Zoo Corporation
Publisher: Zoo Corporation
Release Date: Nov 23, 2023
MSRP: $4.99
I received a key from Zoo Corporation. Thank you so much for the key!
Time spent: 2.3 hours
Achievement Score: 8/12
Ducky Obrien 