App Army Assemble: Pup Champs - "Should you kick back with this adorable puzzler?"

Pup Champs is the latest puzzler from indie developer Afterburn, who you may know from the excellent Golf Peaks and Railbound. Their latest effort sees you taking a young pup from an amateur footballer (soccer player for our US friends) to the big leagues. But, rather than playing the beautiful game in real time, you'll tackle a series of puzzles instead. Catherine reviewed it favourably, so we handed it over to our App Army to see if they agree.

Here's what they said:

This is a cute puzzler, starting off with one pup making moves on a field around obstacles and making a goal. Later on, another pup with different abilities (how and where it can kick the ball) arrives, and you’ll work them together. Plus, you have limited moves. This starts off pretty simply and gets more complex as it goes. There’s a bit of hit and miss involved, I found, but the ability to go back a step helped me work each puzzle out. A bit of patience and thinking got me through without much difficulty. Cute graphics make it appealing, and just a pleasant vibe all around helped me enjoy it. It's certainly worth trying the free levels.

Pups Champs is a charming tactical puzzler where the conceit is that you are coaching a team of cute pups to play football. Turn-based, this is done on a grid, where the goal is to kick the ball into the net. Things start off very simple, but soon, pups with different abilities and hazards are introduced that ramp up the difficulty of the puzzles.

This is a fun puzzler with cute graphics. It’s easy to play but difficult to master. My only gripe is that if you get stuck, there is no hint function, which can get frustrating. If you like puzzle games, this is a no-brainer to purchase the unlock to access all the levels.

As someone who knows absolutely nothing about the rules of football, I took a quick look at this game and cringed. However, once I saw the full format, I gave a sigh of relief. This game is easy to pick up and fun to play. It’s really a puzzle game using a football theme. You have to position your player so that he can score a goal. Simple in theory, but can be difficult in execution. You have a limited number of moves over a grid of squares, added to which you have obstacles to go around and other players in the mix to help you reach your goal. I couldn’t resist. Sometimes challenging, but I have to say that as a keen puzzler, this game did not disappoint and I thoroughly enjoyed playing it.

Summertime is upon us, and a match of football or soccer is always appreciated. Pup Champs is a puzzler featuring a variety of hairy ballers. It is grid-based, and the aim is to score a goal within a limited number of moves per player. In combination with the characters having different passing/shooting abilities, it makes for quite a cerebral experience.

One character can only hit passes along the ground, while another can strike quite long cross balls. Once obstacles in the form of piles of leaves or annoying moles appear, the game takes some thinking. This is also where I can run out of patience, as the game lacks any kind of hint functionality. On the other hand, I feel immense satisfaction upon scoring after five minutes of trial and error.

Pup Champs is a fun and competent puzzler that would be even better with the aforementioned hint system. As a summer football game, I still recommend it.

Pup Champs is a fun puzzler. It’s fairly straightforward but deceptively challenging. The goal is simple enough, it’s literally to get the ball in the goal like soccer. However, you have puzzle-like obstacles that get in the way, and you must use the various pups to get around said obstacles. Each of your pups has different abilities, and you only have a certain number of “steps” per dog.

For instance, one pup can only kick the ball in a straight line, while another can kick the ball in the air, but only a certain number of spaces. This game is all about thinking and planning. I have been stuck many times, and I’m only on the third world. However, I want to keep going, and sometimes leaving the game and coming back opens your eyes to the solution. Highly recommended for fans of puzzlers.

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Pup Champs