One of the challenges when reviewing indie games, is when you encounter ones that simply aren’t terribly good, but also aren’t so awful that they demand loads of words to describe their failings. Somewhere in the middle, more often than not, there are simply games that aren’t terribly ambitious, are lacking in excitement, and simply serve as cannon fodder in the eShop to some extent. Unfortunately, I’d say that Tsetseg's Adventure falls firmly into that category.

In principle, this is a pretty simplistic puzzle platformer, with your goal being to simply survive as you move along, trying to avoid taking hits from enemies and traps, while collecting all the gold coins you can. If you simply stick to the main path, and don’t attempt to work out how to grab the larger gems that act as your challenge goals, it mostly makes for a moderate challenge, but you will still hit tougher spots.

There are a few things that make it tougher, and in the end these serve to further bring the title down in places. The first is that you don’t have any health, so any hit you take will be fatal, sending you back to the beginning of the level. What then exacerbates the problem, is that these stages tend to be pretty long, and there are no checkpoints to be had, so that makes for gameplay that’s both often dull and needlessly high stakes at the same time.

To its credit, it does at least try to continue to add periodic new elements, and even some boss fights, to the mix, but in the end they aren’t enough to really elevate the game to another level. Part of the issue is that so much of the play ultimately feels familiar in some way, making the experience lacking in distinctive personality. As you go on at least the puzzle aspect becomes a little more prevalent, which helps to make it feel a little more unique, but especially when you’re repeating the same long sections over and over again, the desire to stick with it begins to wane, as you start to feel too much of your time is being wasted unnecessarily.