PancitoMerge Review (PC)

PancitoMerge is a beautifully crafted love letter to baked goods and sweet treats, Mexican delicacies and flour-drizzled pan dulce. It is, in short, a sweet and savory puzzler that merges the traditional flavors of Tetris-like confectionary with the powdered pulp of a locally-sourced menu. Think falling blocks, but add a few loaves of fresh bread to the bag, and you’ll have a rough idea of what we’re talking about here.

While the premise is as plain as the dough from whence it came, the execution is something that we ought to celebrate here. Granted, I’m not overly familiar with pan dulce (or even a connoisseur of baked goods, for that matter), but that doesn’t mean I’m unable to embrace a sweet tooth when I feel one itching for something with artificial substance. In this case, I’m not entirely sure what it is that I’m bundling into the paper bag, but that isn’t to say that I don’t want whatever the client needs. To me, it’s bread. But to the folks who call pan dulce a homely comfort, it’s the bread and butter of afternoon delights. And you know what? I almost wish that I could be there.

Of course, if you are familiar with block-building games like Tetris or, to some extent, Candy Crush, then you’ll know exactly how PancitoMerge plays its cards. Sorry, pastries. See, it’s more or less the same idea, only it doesn’t involve stacking bricks, but filling paper bags with a variety of sweet breads and other baked treats in exchange for points and perks. Like your traditional stack-and-shape puzzler, the more you manage to bag, the higher your score will go. The caveat here is that, if you overfill your bag, then the round reaches its peak, and the points you accumulate leave you with one final score. Granted, there’s a little more to it than that — but you get the gist.

Sweet Breads & Subtle Flavors

PancitoMerge is a simple game at heart, yet one that also happens to have its own twists and mid-bagging curveballs. The concept is straightforward: add items into a bag in a swift and orderly manner, and stack points until the bag contains one too many pastries. The challenge here is that, for every five scoops that you pour into the bag, a new customer enters the brasserie with a unique order that needs to be fulfilled. Herein lies your biggest problem: learning how to complete orders whilst also juggling the other baked goods in your bag. Granted, it isn’t a mind-boggling situation, though it does present quite a challenge that requires some strategic decisions and forward planning.

Minor roadblocks cast aside, PancitoMerge harbors some fantastic ideas, with its rich local infusions and radiant aesthetic offering a cozy and relaxing series of stage-based puzzles that ought to keep any fan of the culinary arts aimlessly wrapping and bagging for hours. Again, it doesn’t do too much to reinvent the wheel, and it doesn’t take the block-based design to a new level with any form of mechanical enhancements. But, that isn’t what it aims to accomplish; on the contrary, it settles for a warm and fuzzy experience that idolizes comfort over strenuous puzzle-solving jargon. And honestly, I’m all for the idea of being able to simply mull over a few sweet treats and stack items into a paper bag without having to engage in pointless obstacles.

Simple Yet Satisfying

Thankfully, there is a sizable collection of customers to please and sweet breads to unlock here. In addition to the wealth of levels and point-based challenges, you also have a pretty huge variety of items to consider and ultimately utilize to build your brand, so to speak. From humbly baked beginnings to mouth-watering climaxes, each bakery features its own distinctive style and product, customers and demands, with each area offering its own vast collection of challenges and opportunities to accumulate points and leaderboard rewards.

With all of the above said, PancitoMerge might not be everyone’s cup of tea, mainly due to the fact that, stacking loop cast aside, there isn’t much to do other than amass points and chase high scores. Don’t get me wrong, it has the flavorful crust of a weighty puzzler, but it doesn’t provide much more to keep you coming back for a third, fourth, or fifth taster. It isn’t a one-and-done sort of affair, though it is one that, like many falling block games, has something of a novelty factor that eventually wears thin the more you subject yourself to the graft.

The good news here is that, while the gameplay hook is somewhat predictable, PancitoMerge has plenty of great features, including a thematic look and a general sense of warmth that radiates from its baked goods. It’s a cute game, and it doesn’t take much to realize just how much heart and soul its creators have put into establishing its buttery smooth foundations. Is it the best game you’ll ever play? No. Is it a game that will make you smile from ear to ear? Absolutely.

Verdict

It isn’t often that a falling block game leaves me with cravings or a restless desire for pastries, but when it comes to PancitoMerge, it’s hard not to feel drawn to those guilty pleasures. It isn’t that it’s a compelling puzzler; it’s the fact that it combines two adorable ingredients together to form a bittersweet delight for the senses that makes me feel awfully satisfied. The gameplay is, eh — it’s familiar, and it doesn’t do much to broaden the paper bag of stacking games with its baked twist. But, to give credit where it’s due, it does reimagine the genre with its own cultural influences and baked dilemmas and what have you. It isn’t much, but in this case it works wonders, thankfully.

While there’s certainly no shortage of falling block games on the market, the odds of finding one that leaves you feeling both joyful and peckish are rather slim. Here, though, it’s as if the best ingredients have been pooled together to formulate a tasty treat that can appease your appetite — and then some. So, if you are hungry for a slice of Mexican culture and some good old-fashioned pan dulce in a falling block-like format, then consider PancitoMerge as your invitation to feast on the local culinary delights.