There’s another good reason to leave this app on your device: while real-money items (like the Duraniam card) can be restored, unlocks you purchased with Credz will be locked again if you delete and re-install the game, and any Credz you paid real money for are gone. If you deleted the game, this might be cause to reinstall it: despite the beautiful graphics, Shufflepuck Cafe is a mere 40 megs, a testament to Agharta’s in-house engine. They’ve also added the option to turn off the game’s music, which is a boon in itself, as the game’s sound is high-quality but the music is on a short loop. For me, it represents A New Hope of actually enjoying the game rather than banging my head against it. It’s clear that Agharta considers “Training" to be just that, a way to get players acclimated to the game. Also, in Training difficulty, rewards are reduced and you can only win bronze or silver medals, not gold (even if you play a perfect game). It’s worth nothing that Training mode is only for standard duels (first one to five points), and not the high-stakes Betting mode or Survival mode. A new update adds “Training" difficulty to duels. Well, if you’re a shufflepuck wuss, like me, help has arrived. Many players were likely to give up after a few punishing games, and others would find the high speed on the relatively short table to be impossible to adjust to. If you're looking for a simple game to play on the go and have ever owned a mock lightsaber you'll have a ball with Shufflepuck Cantina.In our review of Shufflepuck Cantina (Free), we felt that the game’s primary flaw was a brutally steep challenge curve. You're unlikely to resent sending money back to the developers for the time and polish that they put into this freemium title. Thankfully, making purchases isn't necessary to progress through the game and unlock every feature, but it does speed up the process significantly. You can earn these through standard matches of air hockey against NPCs or purchase them with your own money via IAPs. In order to unlock chapters of a character's backstory or progress to higher levels of the cantina you have to spend a good amount of in-game currency (Credz). It's true that Shufflepuck Cantina presents a gorgeous 3D world from the outset, but it's the addition of interwoven backstories and plot that really makes it stand out. While you're rewarded with in-game loot (exclusive pucks and mallets) for delving into each character's backstory, those who like a bit of lore in the games will find that learning about the characters and their various motivations is rewarding enough in its own right. Set in an intergalactic bar that looks strangely familiar to a cantina from a 1977 movie about wars that take place among the stars (with a riff on the iconic music to match), the game presents references to various works of science-fiction with its tongue planted firmly in its cheek.Įach opponent that you can challenge in the cantina is more than just someone that you face off against with pucks and mallets: each of them has a backstory that unfolds episodically. The gameplay of Shufflepuck Cantina - intuitive, fun, and fast-paced as it is - would prove relatively boring after awhile if it weren't for the excellent graphics, storyline, and missions that make up the game's fictional world. While annoying to deal with at first, these strikes help keep the game challenging, and break up the tedium of volleying a puck back and forth in what is ultimately a reprise of the first commercially successful video game. Score enough points and you win the match.Įach opponent has a special 'strike', which will send the puck at you in a signature style - curved shots, corkscrews, and teleporting pucks are all possible. For those who haven't, a tutorial presents the finer points of the game in an easy-to-follow fashion.Ī puck is placed in the middle of a table, and you strike it with your mallet to send it past your opponent's mallet to score a point. The basic gameplay of Shufflepuck Cantina will be immediately familiar to anyone who has dabbled in the game of air hockey before. Pucker upĪt its core, Shufflepuck Cantina is a homage to the 1989 Macintosh game Shufflepuck Café, in which you had to compete in a sci-fi version of Pong using an air hockey table as a battlefield. Shufflepuck Cantina extends this simple pleasure to characters from a galaxy far, far away. Whether this occurs in a game of polo or a round of croquet, the excitement of sending an inanimate object hurtling into your opponent's face is a pleasure that can be enjoyed by anyone. Few things in life are as satisfying as smacking something with a mallet.
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