Toree's Panic Pack costs 89p. 99¢. That’ll probably either perk up your ears, or make your face twist in reasonable scepticism. Luckily, as with all the previous Toree games, it’s absolutely worthy of the former and certainly not the latter.
Previous games in the series of short and colourful 3D platformers have had a mantra of ‘easy to pick up, difficult to master’, and if you’ve indulged in any of them and have been hankering for something a bit more ‘difficult to pick up, aching to master’, well you’ve struck gold here, sunshine.
Toree’s Panic Pack is a collection of three smaller games aimed squarely at the experienced small yellow bird pilots of the world. You’ve got Toree Genesis, a delightful little three-stage romp; Toree Jumbled Jam 2, which introduces four more, far longer stages than those in Genesis; and lastly Toree Missions. We’ll get back to that last one in a bit.
All the seven new stages present in the first two games rank you on your speed, have a spray of stars to collect, and Genesis even hides three ‘Shards’ in each of its stages, allowing you to unlock Super Toree, bearing fantastic speed and more responsive turning and movement.
And this is where Toree’s Panic Pack (and every Toree game, frankly) comes into its own. You’ll likely blast through once to reach the goal, another to collect all the stars, and myriad more to achieve that glorious S Rank. A single playthrough of these two may only take you half an hour, but Toree is just so much fun to control, it’s nothing but a joy to go back and clear these bite-sized bonus challenges.
As we alluded earlier, though, this ain’t your grandma’s Toree. Toree Jumbled Jam 2 especially ramps up the difficulty to degrees not yet seen in the series and, by Jingo, are they satisfying to finally master.
Toree Missions on the other hand… let’s just say the skull next to the final row of six is absolutely on point. There are 24 missions in total requiring you to complete tasks such as defeating all the enemies, collecting all the stars, or navigating sporadic platforms in low gravity. They’re reasonably simple to begin with, but their difficulty only ever increases as you progress. You’ll need to be a true Toree master to best these stages.
Some of the stages in this collection don’t feel quite as refined as those found in Toree 3D or Toree 2, and the game’s arcade-like nature means it won’t hold your attention for hours and hours on end, but what Toree’s Panic Pack sets out to do, it achieves with ease. It’s a fun and fast 3D platformer with surprising replayability (i.e. a Toree game), a rock-bottom price of entry, and a heaping barrelful of charm to fall in love with.
Comments 29
I'm already grabbing it, you don't have to convince me.
Looks like a good time.
I freakin love Toree and Siactro games. can't wait for this!
New Toree just dropped?? Let's gooo!!!
What!? I was only wondering about the Diplodocus crew the other night and reorganised a Groups folder on my Switch for them to fit a game that slipped through the cracks (Felix the Toy DX, very much so seems like a Toy Story 2 ripoff in the best possible way to say that).
I've always been an advocate for these guys, please support them knowing their bite-sized games have fun secrets. But be aware that practically all of them will go from cute and fun to creepy and nightmare-inducing at any given moment.
I’ve been unfamiliar with Toree up until reading this enjoyable review, and while this one might be a bit too difficult for me (those last couple of screenshots make me want to seek out an alcove and cower), i am going to immediately go and purchase the first couple games and see what in tarnation would prompt such lavish appraisal.
I need my grandmammy’s Toree!
Thanks for the review, moonbeam!
(Bought and played through Toree 3d. It’s very short, but a lot of fun).
This game got rated better than Nes World Championships and a lot of other nintendo first party games💀
I'm so excited for this to come out, Siactro is my goat
Looking forward to playing this tomorrow.
But, uh, why is this one rated T???
I still haven’t played Kiwi 64 yet, but I look forward to grabbing this next time i am on the eshop!
@Mz3player : Most digital exclusives are given automatically-generated ratings via the IARC scheme. Basically, either the developer(s) or publisher fills in a survey, which then produces ratings for most major markets.
This can sometimes result in some wildly inaccurate ratings, though this appears to be far less egregious than some of the others I've seen.
@Mz3player If you turn the volume all the way up you can hear Toree spraying a string of profanities under his breath.
I really dug the first one, should really check out the sequels sometime.
This is the kind of good cheap game that gets buried under a mountain of shovelware in the game store, unfortunately.
@SillyG Hmm, that makes sense, it's just weird that it gets T with the only descriptor (for the ESRB rating, anyway) being "Mild Violence." Like, at that rating I'm expecting the "mild" to be gone or for it to have swears or blood in it. I guess we'll see tomorrow, though!
The Toree games are consistently good for a great price.
99¢? Consider my money taken!
I will never forgive Siactro for conning me into buying a horror game!
@Mz3player : In Australia, it's rated PG for "Mild violence, Scary scenes" (the "scary scenes" descriptor is almost never used for games that have been peer-reviewed the old fashioned way), so the US rating checks out. The publisher probably ticked a box in the survey that just tipped it over the edge. In the US, blood is usually given a separate descriptor anyway. I suspect that the game would have been rated E had it gone through the traditional avenues.
Never tried and I know the article said it’s good but I’m still a little skeptical..welp no harm in trying it I guess. I clicked the link though and it said it wasn’t available.
Edit: I’m so stupid it’s because it isn’t released yet lol.
Edit 2: I nabbed this one and 2, can’t wait to give em a shot.
these games are awesome, highly recommend grabbing the previous two games if you haven't already
That subhed lol
The poster boy of Good Because It’s A Quid Games.
When actually you could get Inside at it’s regular 90% off price and have a 10,000% better time.
Might finally get this. Or all three of them while I'm at it.
Can you play it with the 64 controller?
Oh yes, always up for some Toree.
I'll wait until it's on sale
Haven't played any of the Toree games yet, but definitely will at some point including this one although I don't know how far I'll get considering its difficulty!
Been having some strange circumstances while playing the game. When I pick one of the levels in Jumbled Jam 2, it puts me in the second Genesis level. (Complete with collectible crystals, which aren't in JJ2 levels.) Once I finish the level, I get sent back to Jumble Jam 2 with no rank. Once I finished one of the Mission levels, I get sent back to the Jumble Jam 2 level select. I imagine these are just bugs (I'm writing this on launch day.) so hopefully these get ironed out fairly soon. Still, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't weirded out when they occurred.
@B3RTAY Did you hit your head?
Show Comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...