Piffle (Switch) Review

There’s a lot of mobile games on Switch now. This is another one. For some, I’m sure that’s enough review to go and seek something else out: like most mobile games, Crossy Road developer Hipster Whale’s Piffle is designed for quick but frequent bursts. For those who remain interested, there’s a bit to talk about with Piffle: it’s fun, although a little hollow. If you enjoy looking at cats though… oh boy.

Piffle is a brick breaker game. You, a person in a cat suit, collect tiny little cat… balls…? Let’s go with round felines instead. These are your titular piffles! You’ll be throwing these cute kitty orbs at blocks because of some loosely established and barely explored kidnapping reasons. Think Breakout but without the bounces, or Peggle with multiple balls. There’s a couple hundred levels to work your way through, with new types of blocks introduced as you progress. Some blocks will move, some will explode and damage nearby blocks, some will reveal different blocks after they’re broken – there’s a decent amount of variety to give a sense of progression. There’s also extra variations – the ability to collect more piffles within the level to increase the potency of each shot, lightning bolts to power up individual piffles, or (very irritating) spinners that fire off piffles in random directions, so no level ever truly feels stagnant. You’ve also got the ability to step in and affect the level yourself, too – you’ll collect a bank of items to help. After each shot, the blocks will move further down the screen, and it’s an instant game over if they hit the bottom. You can resist this by using something like a bowling ball  to do extra damage each turn, or a hammer to instantly destroy one block. Once you finally clear all of a level’s blocks, you’re treated to the most over-the-top joyous celebration I’ve seen in some time: your piffles turn into little fireworks, and you get autotuned meows aplenty, and the big stars fly and slam into your completion placard!!! It really is a multiple exclamation point kind of moment, and it’s hard to not fall in love with the extraordinarily cuddly vibes that Piffle gives off. Sure, nothing here is innovative, and you’ll likely have seen most of what Piffle has to offer in the many other brick breaker games out there, but the smiles that it can bring are genuine.

There’s something a little insidious lurking beneath the cat costumes, though. While there are no microtransactions in Piffle on the Switch, you’re constantly seeing the holes left by them: the way that different Piffle designs are unlocked, for example. They require you to spend in-game currency to purchase a blueprint (or, much more rarely, you’ll win one); then, you need to spend in-game currency to purchase the materials to craft the blueprint. These materials are only available in inconveniently large and expensive quantities at the shop – or, again, by randomly collecting through playing levels. It’s so unnecessarily bloated for nought more than a cosmetic change, and it just screams ‘incentive to spend money’. You can look past it somewhat though, since it doesn’t legitimately affect gameplay – but another microtransaction incentive, randomised levels, sure does. That’s right: not a single level in this puzzle game has a solution, since each one is newly generated on each playthrough. Once you’ve made it through 30 or so levels, you’ll start occasionally getting levels that are impossible to complete without leaning heavily on single use items – the items are there to be used, sure, but again require such a large investment of currency to replenish that’s well beyond what you’ll earn in regular progression. By the time you’re in the late game, every level is a hellscape requiring constant item burns, and you can’t identify if burning everything will even let you finish the level.

It screams microtransaction. What I think is worse, though, is the fact that it negates the concept of progressing through levels at all. Each level might look different visually, and the algorithm for each one is certainly tweaked to favour spawning specific types and strengths of block, but when the ability to complete a level is left to chance it’s the same as admitting that there is no solution, no strategy, and no purpose to each one. Playing a lot of Piffle results in a profound emptiness that no explosion of stars and cat faces can cure.

Just don’t think too hard about Piffle. It’s cute and colourful and is pleased as punch to offer an endorphin rush at every turn. If you want a time killer at the bus stop, you can sure do a lot worse. That said, I feel that mobile games like this one need to do more than be ported across to Switch and sold, minus ads and microtransactions – there’s very little to make the proposition of purchasing this game appealing over playing for free on your phone. But hey, look. That cat is round. Haha.

Rating: 3/5