[Discovering Indies] Shufflepuck Cantina

Video games based on air hockey (also called table hockey, aerohockey or shuffleboard) have never enjoyed great popularity, although they have been a constant for almost three decades and are available on practically all platforms.

Shufflepuck Cantina It is another video game that joins the long list of those based on this sport, but with two particularities. It is inspired by an Amiga classic from 1989 called Shufflepuck Cafe (and which also had versions for other platforms, including the NES), and also mixes a story mode with a style western space that draws mainly from the known universe of Star Wars.

The French from Agharta Studio are the creators of this game, as well as some others, including the 1112 saga, which I will talk about in another article, and they usually release their games mainly on iOS and then port them to Android, although in this case a year later they also released a version with improvements for PC and with the addition of the word deluxe in the title.

In Shufflepuck Cantina You will put yourself in the shoes of an astronaut who lands on a mysterious extraterrestrial world due to an accident that leaves his ship unusable. Some little bugs on the planet take you to a local bar while you discover that the only way to get off the planet will be to build a new ship, with the resulting problem of have to collect all the parts necessary to do so, which, furthermore, are coincidentally in the possession of the owners of different bars, who will only give them to you beating them in air hockey games.

You will have to go through the different floors of a bar, learning as much as possible about your opponent and then challenge him multiple times to a game of air hockey until you unlock his complete biography and he gives you the piece you need to continue advancing. How will you assume this procedure? requires a lot of repetition, since the various characters have multiple parts to unlock in their biographies, which include all kinds of details about them, their gameplay, their abilities and also their weaknesses.

The air hockey games are very fun and quite varied, taking place on tables that look a good size and with the camera positioned at the perfect angle to facilitate the correct handling of the club. On these tables certain power-ups who will have to be hit with the puck or disk to obtain them, and that will serve to help us, such as getting an invisible shield that protects us from the opponent's attacks or a larger mace that will make it easier to hit the puck back. Of course, not everything is done to make the game easier for us, and some power-ups They will benefit the enemy by giving them a shield or making your mace smaller.

Each enemy has a different special ability that will make the puck move in strange ways, such as changing direction at a 90˚ angle or advancing in a curved line, and although at first it is easy to detect when they will use their special move, in more advanced levels their use begins to be almost constant, becoming quite difficult to counterattack and even more so if you play on PC, where the control of the mace with the mouse is not as fast or precise as on touch devices.

Graphically the game looks very good. Its spatial aesthetics suit it wonderfully and the lighting effects and character animations are impeccable. The enemies are varied in style and unique, although the fact that this game, by design, is based on repeating games multiple times, can make you tired of seeing the same animations and hearing the same sound effects dozens of times.

If you add to that repetition a system of objectives to meet that can sometimes be a little confusing and an increasing difficulty that can reach the point of despair, we have a game that will please many but that only the most patient and persevering will finish.

Even with its flaws, Shufflepuck Cantina It is a recommended game, especially if you play it on a mobile device, which will give you the possibility of playing fast and entertaining games, dialogues with a lot of humor, and a very striking visual style.