GAMES REVIEW – Steven Universe: Gem Bound

Steven Universe. Haven’t heard much about Steven being in Canada and not having Cartoon Network on my cable box. But what I have seen and read has got me pretty intrigued. The basic premise is that Steven is the newest member a group of intergalactic warriors, Pearl, Amethyst and Garnet, known as the Crystal Gems who go around and save the universe with the power of the gem stones that are attached to their bodies. From the sneak peeks and leaked footage I’m most looking forward to Steven’s relationship to the three badass heroes, at this point it sounds like it’s gonna play like a little brother and his three older sisters sort of affair mixed with saving the universe of course which can lend itself to some really funny moments and some heartfelt moments as well. But we’ll just have to wait until the premiere of Steven Universe to find out if that will be true or not.

To tide us over I’ll be looking at the new Cartoon Network game based on the plump little ball of happiness and see if its a good advertisement for the show or if it waters down my enthusiasm like Li’l Gideon Shrinks Back from last time. The basic contextual story is that the Gems as they call themselves are putting Steven through training so he has to jump a seemingly endless flight of platforms to earn coins to make the game more diverse. The moment I booted this game up I realized immediately the play style it was initially going for. It’s Doodle Jump. You click your mouse once at the beginning to make your character jump once and then it’s all up to you as you direct your mouse to wear you want them to go. It’s a very simple game mechanic and it works very well here. But while Gem Bound and Doodle Jump are in essence the same game, Gem Bound changes things up by adding an “item upgrade system.”

Let me explain, throughout the game you will collect coins which you can use to buy energy, shields, double coin items, and the Gem’s super moves. However it’s not implemented like how I thought it would be. the basic you buy an item, it’s in your inventory, and then you use it in your inventory. If it were used like that, THAT would make this game terrible. Thankfully they don’t do that and instead, you’re basically buying items that will appear in game randomly and the more money you get the more you can upgrade those items to add to their usefulness. Like upgrading the coin double will double your already doubled coins making it very easy to rack up coins much more quickly.

The only other mechanic to discuss is falling down. When you miss a platform or Steven’s health bar is completely drained, he’ll fall off the platform, a pink bubble will appear around him and he’ll tumble down as you navigate him downwards trying to kill as enemies on the way down as possible. It’s a fun little mechanic that can be upgraded in the store to make your bubble bigger, move slower and last longer because when beginning you can only fall for 10 seconds before it goes directly to the GAME OVER screen.

Overall the game’s simple mechanics and upgrade system give it a lot of replay value. I don’t think it’s so much fun that it makes me more interested to watch the show, because to be fair it’s just a Doodle Jump clone. But nevertheless it’s still a fun game that if you have a few minutes to spare I think you would enjoy it.