Newt One Review

Newt One rewards players for how much life they bring to the game world, not how much life is taken from it. Experience your progress through colour and music swelling in the game world as you play as Newt – a new tone in the musical land of Groovy Hue which has fallen to the Great Slumber. Awaken this sleeping, silent world to new heights of colour and music in this colorful and relaxing 3D Platforming journey of cheer, music, and friendship – Newt One’s purpose is to create happiness.

Colour the owls and they make platforms

Colour By Numbers

Take Newt on a whimsical journey across the various regions of Groovy Hue, which has sadly fallen foul to The Great Slumber! Each of the different areas have been drained of all their colour and music and its Newt’s mission, with the help of his friends to restore their former glory.

To begin with, you’ll be tasked with colouring in the landscape and awakening the music simply by navigating the terrain, touching things and collecting musical notes. As you progress through each level (6 per region) you’ll acquire new tools to help you.

The Wings for example, will help you glide between expansive areas. Then there’s the Drum, which by charging up and releasing, creates a large boom, covering a wider area and allowing you to cross certain platforms.

As you make your way across each stage, it’ll naturally become more vibrant and colourful. Not only that, but you start to flesh out more of the music throughout the level. It’s fair to say then, that Newt One is a game designed for all ages and skill level (for the most part).

Groovy Baby!

I am pleased to announce that I didn’t incur any performance issues during my time with Newt One, whether docked or in handheld mode. Visually, it was very crisp and bright and looked to be running at a rock steady 60fps. 

All of the wacky characters had their own unique design style, with some funky costumes for Newt to suit each environment, which have a kind of Aztec or Inca vibe. Speaking of environments, each area you visit has its own theme. Such as Forest, Island and Cloud.

To help keep things fresh, they all have their own musical soundtrack and colour pallette. With the bright visual style and upbeat tunes, it all comes together to create a very relaxing, laid back game that anyone can enjoy.

Critique

Whilst I did enjoy my time with Newt One, it’s not without its downsides. The biggest one is probably the run time. Just as I started to get the hang of the game, it was all over. With only a handful of worlds, each with 6 levels, you could probably conquer it in a single sitting.

Some will see this as a bad thing, others might appreciate it not outstaying its welcome. Which brings me to my next gripe. I loved the upbeat ditties in Newt One, I just wished there was more variety. 

Each world seemed to use the same song through all 6 levels, which did get mildly repetitive. I think if each level had its own music track, it would ease the monotony. 

As much as the game tries to throw new mechanics at you, the aforementioned pickups for example, the core mechanic remains the same.Traverse a linear stage, colouring things in as you go, collect the music, save the parrot, rinse and repeat.

Wake up the world of Groovy Hue

The biggest change to the gameplay was the shielded off areas of certain stages, which I thought was very cool. These are essentially colour suppressors. When you enter the shield, ALL the colour is washed out, including Newt himself. This leads to a cool black and white look, you can’t use your tools here or colour anything until you shut it down.  

Controls were kept pleasingly simple too. You move Newt around with the left stick, shift the camera with the right stick, jump with B and bang the drum with A. It surprised me then, that some of the platforming sections actually required quite a bit of skill and accuracy.

There were a couple of sections where I found myself dying multiple times. It’s odd, however i put this down to the overly floaty handling of Newt. Sometimes he just wouldn’t accelerate or stop anywhere near as quick as I would have liked. Due to this, I can see younger gamers struggling with the platforming sections.

Verdict

Overall I had a really good time with Newt One. A little more variety to the music and game mechanics would have gone a long way, though chasing that elusive 100% level score should keep the more hardcore gamer invested a bit longer. 

With that said, I feel that developer DevNAri should be commended on making, what I feel is quite possibly the most interactive colouring book to date. If you’ve had a rough day at school or work, why not kick back and relax with Newt One and leave all your stresses behind.

Highly Recommended

Enjoyed this review? Check out Micramanic’s review of Redeemer: Enhanced Edition and mine for The Tenth Line Special Edition! If you enjoy our content we hope and encourage you to check out our Ko-Fi page. We need all the help we can get to start a podcast and to further our site’s quality! Thanks!

Reviewed on the Nintendo Switch by Micramanic. Game provided by Whitethorn Digital.