Atari was once the biggest name in video games, and although its presence remains it has faded in relevance since the 1980s. The company has been through numerous restructures, buyouts and bankruptcies, but Atari is now looking to publish its first original game in a fair few years. Kombinera is from developer Graphite Lab, and has a bit of a weight on its shoulders thanks to its connection to that storied company.
Graphite Lab's previous title Hive Jump was a joy of a side-scrolling roguelike shooter, but Kombinera is something a bit different. A puzzle game in nature, Kombinera tasks the player with merging multiple colored balls that are stuck within taxing environments. It seems simple, until one hit kill spikes and missiles turn things up a notch.
Kombinera manages that must-have element for all the best puzzle games: it's a simple premise made complex through level design. The player controls all the balls on a level at once, and each color has a different ability; red ones don't take spike damage, yellow ones break yellow bricks, and black ones are unable to jump. This leads the player to have to not only think logically about which balls to move in which order to combine them into one, but also take part in taxing platforming.
The game is very striking to look at, with a simplistic black background with white and primary color tones that hark back to the likes of the Atari 2600. It's not just a minimalist puzzle aesthetic, either, with the distinct visuals and grid-like structure helping to make it clear for the player to work out what their next step is. Even so, there are little flourishes like floating particles and reactions to grey background objects to make things a little more interesting.
Kombinera has a fair bit of depth behind its uncomplicated surface level, though. There are over 300 levels for players to get through, and although they are a one-and-done in terms of completion there is some decent replay value to be found through collecting a crown in some levels and trying to get as good a time as possible. It's not for everyone, and the bonus levels at the end of the game fall more into the frustrating territory of platforming, but it's good to have something to return to.
Those 300 levels will certainly keep the player busy for a while, though. Kombinera is not the most difficult of puzzle games available, but it's still a challenge that progressively gets trickier as the player gets to grips with its mechanics. It's also an extremely moreish game to play, and it's easy to lose yourself in wanting to play one more level after one more level, while none of the individual stages are complicated enough to stop the player from thinking they are on the cusp of figuring it out.
That said, Kombinera isn't without its faults, and the core issue here is the controls. At times Kombinera feels too floaty for its own good, without the crisp control needed to navigate some of its trickier moments of platforming. This leads to those frustrating puzzle game situations where the player has worked out what they need to do to solve the level, but is left trying to ease their way through slippery jumps in order to complete the stage.
Nonetheless it's easy to forgive these problems thanks to the tone of the game and just how satisfying it is to solve a level. Kombinera is a very well constructed puzzler that knows just how far to go with its design choices. With parallels to be found in excellent indie puzzle games like Baba Is You and Thomas Was Alone, Kombinera is a clever little game that is excellently suited to the on-the-go nature of the Switch.
Kombinera releases 7 April for PC, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Apple mobile devices. Screen Rant was provided with a Switch download code for the purposes of this review.