Indigo 7: Quest for Love | Xbox Review

I love puzzle games, and I love games based on music. On paper, everything about Indigo 7: Quest for Love from Dolores Entertainment sounds like it creates a perfect recipe for a game that I would love. Sadly, the trailer neglects to add one huge factor that made me wish I could turn this game faster than I could download it.

Feel the Rhythm

There’s a story, if you want to call it that. You are a nameless band on a mission to make it big. The juvenile plot is told by way of slightly-moving comic strip characters. Most of your adventure centers around the lead singer trying to get a girlfriend with the help of his band mates. OK, fine. I can buy that.

Unfortunately, the dialogue turns into a sophomoric cornucopia of ridiculousness. Nothing told here is remotely interesting or engaging. To make matters worse, all of the dialogue is told in text with no voice work. I wouldn’t mind so much if the trailer hadn’t given the impression that each character was voiced throughout. Even the portions from the trailer that had voice actors reading the lines didn’t have them in the game proper. This doesn’t affect the gameplay whatsoever, and let’s be honest, no voice work was going to help the writing here. It’s just frustrating to expect one thing and get another.

If the gameplay couldn’t push me through, the writing certainly wasn’t going to either. It has some of the most cringe-worthy lines I’ve experienced in a long time. The energy is there for sure, but I found myself skipping the dialogue after a few rounds. I simply didn’t care.

Feel the Rhyme

If you’re going into Indigo 7 expecting a rhythm game, you’ll be sorely disappointed. Music is merely the backdrop for the story and nothing more. At its core is an Othello style game. You’re given a board with hexagonal tiles ranging from three to seven different colors. Your goal is to turn the board to a single color by flipping them in large groups.

To do this, you’ll start on one corner of the board. Your starting hexagon will be touching two others, and you must choose which color you’d like to convert your tiles to. The game then flips every matching tile to make them “yours.” Now your field of hexagons has increased in size, and you have more colors to choose from.

The trick here for achieving higher scores lies with the combo mechanics. If your next selection flips over more tiles than your previous turn, the combo meter increases. So in essence, you’re looking for a set of tiles that is slightly bigger than the last, but not so large that it makes your next combo difficult to find.

At first, I was really digging the gameplay. It’s simple enough to wrap your head around, and despite being terrible at lining up combos, I got the gist very quickly. By the end of the bare-bones tutorial, I was certain I was ready for anything the game threw at me.

Get On Up

The the game threw something at me that made me wish I could turn it off immediately. The second level introduced the core of the gameplay, which is head-to-head matchups against AI-controlled characters from other bands you battle. At this point, it was a race against the computer to see who could clear the board faster.

Nothing will turn me away faster from a puzzle game than one that doesn’t let me strategically plan out my way to solve puzzles. This style of play works with games like Tetris, Tetris Attack, or Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, because you’re reacting to pieces falling in a way they always will. In Indio 7, however, there’s no pattern to memorize. You have to study each board to find your correct path, and by the time you do (usually within twenty seconds), your opponent will have beaten you. The only way to win is to randomly select colors and hope for the best, completely killing any opportunity for legitimate puzzle strategy.

This was so off-putting for me as a lover of puzzle games. I need time to think, and you have none here. And the computer is completely relentless with a difficulty spike that triggers almost immediately. Only hardcore puzzle enthusiast will enjoy this one, but it’s quirky story and overly colorful art and characters don’t seem to fit. I’m not sure who exactly this game is for, as the dichotomy is insanely high here.

Indigo 7: Quest for Love Final Verdict

As a single-player gaming experience, it’s very difficult for me to recommend Indigo 7: Quest for Love. It’s a great concept hampered by frustrating timers and annoying storytelling. The only saving grace I could see for this title is playing against friends in multiplayer mode. At least that way matches are even and fair. Nothing pulled me to push forward, and each level felt more and more like a chore, especially in the higher levels where the difficulty gets even worse. If you can find a friend to play with, it might be worth your time. But I would steer clear of this if you’re expecting a compelling experience on your own.

To hear me talk more about Indigo 7: Quest for Love, be sure to listen to Episode 354 of The Gaming Outsider Podcast around the 1:04:50 time stamp.

This review is based on an Xbox copy Indigo 7: Quest for Love provided by Jaleo PR for coverage purposes. It is also available on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation.