Tempopo (Switch) Review

Australia is no stranger to pumping out banger indie games. It’s something that’s been a part of our video game landscape for a long while, but it’s ramped up significantly since the launch of the Switch. Hollow Knight, Golf Story, Unpacking, Moving Out, Cult of the Lamb, Untitled Goose Game, The Plucky Squire — there’s probably a lot more I’m forgetting, but Australia’s impact on the games industry is plain to see, and there are countless success stories. After having played Tempopo from Brisbane-based Witch Beam (also known for Assault Android Cactus and Unpacking), I’m pleased to say that Australia’s modern legacy of an indie game banger factory won’t be changing anytime soon. 

Tempopo is best described as a mix of Lemmings and Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. Like the latter, you’re presented with a small, floating diorama of a level, and you’re tasked with collecting little trinkets – in this case musical flowers – around the stage. Except unlike Captain Toad, you’re not controlling your character directly; instead, you’ll be directing a bunch of adorable little pink guys called Tempopo around the stage for you. 

These Tempopo, besides being the cutest pink guys in gaming after Kirby, will start in a set place on the stage, then start bouncing forward once you hit play. You have no direct control over them, they’ll just walk in whatever direction they’re facing, even if they’re about to launch themselves into the ether or run face-first into a nasty skeleton. 

And that’s where the Lemmings aspect comes into play. Each level provides you with a limited selection of objects that can be placed into the stage, and these objects change your Tempopo’s behaviour when they run into it. There’s a wide range of objects that your Tempopo can use, ranging from simple ones like changing their direction to more complex ones like smashing a tile in front of them, turning into a block or jump pad, or pushing a block in their way — and that’s just in the first world. 

So each level goes like this: you get dropped into a stage, with your Tempopo in their starting positions already, and your behaviour objects in hand. Then it’s up to you to figure out how to use those objects to direct your Tempopo around the stage to collect all of the flowers and get to the end of the level. 

It sounds pretty simple, but the complexity scales up quickly. It didn’t take long before Tempopo started tickling the puzzle solving complex in my brain, and not long after it was giving my brain a full workout. My methods for solving these puzzles changed throughout my time with the game, too — at first I would just let my Tempopo run and then stop the run when they encountered a problem to place an object to help them, but that strategy didn’t last for long. 

Then, I tried working from the end point going backwards, planning out the moves that my little guys would need to get to their goal. That worked for a while, but eventually the complexity of the stages reached a point where it wasn’t feasible to work that way. Working backwards, I didn’t know how or where my various Tempopo would be by the end of the stage. They might have smashed a few blocks I’d relied upon in my calculations, or one might have collected flowers while the other didn’t. In the end, I had to use a mixture of techniques to solve each puzzle, and I slowly learned new methods for piecing together a level. 

And this is the beauty of Tempopo as a puzzle game. It’s not a puzzle game that you can just learn once and suddenly you’re good at every stage — the mechanics are shared across stages but the level design means that you’re forced to come up with unique strategies for solving the logic behind the puzzles. It’s complex and challenging, but never mechanically difficult, and every barrier that you come across is one that can be solved by examining your own approach, rather than necessarily needing to figure out something new in the game itself. You know how everything works by the time the real complexity kicks in, so you need to refine your approach as you progress. 

And if you’re finding it too challenging, there’s an option for a more directed mode that tells you where objects can be placed to solve the puzzles, and a hint system that seems to work very well, even if I was too stubborn to use it myself. It’s fun to approach these puzzles with a friend or loved one, too — the mechanical simplicity of Tempopo means that you can have a few friends around and all point at the TV where everybody thinks items should go. It probably wasn’t designed to be a party game, but it’s enthralling when played as one nonetheless. 

It helps, too, that the presentation is as strong as it is. Tempopo is an absolutely gorgeous game, bursting with colour and character, and it has a phenomenal soundtrack that actually plays into the gameplay, too, with your Tempopo bouncing along to the beat. Nothing is specifically timed so you don’t need good rhythm to actually play, but there’s something incredibly charming seeing your pink little guys hopping along to the music as they go about their business. 

It looks and runs like a dream on Switch, too, with smooth frame rates, fairly quick load times, and no bugs or issues in sight. It’s polished to a mirror finish in just about every aspect, which is to be expected from Witch Beam — in my experience, the team over there don’t do things half-way, and Tempopo is no different. 

If I had any criticism at all, it would be that the visual design can sometimes be just a little bit overwhelming. It’s not enough to negatively impact the experience, but loading into a stage sometimes has you struggling to make sense of the level, not because it’s not well-designed, but because you’re bombarded with bright, colourful stages bursting with all kinds of interesting stuff, and it takes a moment to adjust and start making sense of everything. 

The controls can be very slightly finicky too. With this type of game, using a controller is always going to be a very slightly subpar experience compared to a mouse, where you can freely place objects quickly and easily. Witch Beam has done everything it can to make this experience smoother – including support for touch in handheld mode, which is nice – but I can’t help but feel like having the finer control of a mouse would make it even better. Perhaps a Switch 2 Edition in the future could iron out that minor wrinkle. 

Tempopo is a phenomenal puzzle game that excels in just about everything it tries to do, taking inspirations from some of the best games in the genre and turning them into something truly unique and truly special. It’s a gorgeous audiovisual experience that puts your brain into a puzzle-solving frenzy, and it’s one of the best puzzle games you’ll ever play. 

Rating: 5/5