If you’re unfamiliar with AWAY: Shuffle Dungeon’s developer, Mistwalker, it may interest you to know that the company was founded by the creator of the Final Fantasy series. If you’ve browsed around to find out some information about the game, then you’ve probably seen it often described as an RPG. For ease of understanding, I want to say right now that the only thing that connects AWAY RPGs to the likes of Final Fantasy is that characters advance in levels. That’s it. AWAY is far and away a puzzle game. There are a few adventure and action elements tied to the solutions, but they are so simple that they take a back seat to the brain twisters.

The player assumes the role of Sword, a young man who was not born in the village that he resides. Every so often a magical force within the village—simply called “AWAY” by the locals—causes a villager to disappear, never to return. One fateful day, a female friend of the protagonist is abducted by AWAY, though this time, something else goes wrong. Most of the villagers, and the village itself, are also taken by AWAY, leaving only Sword left to figure out what happened.

While exploring the empty village, the player will find an object which, when picked up, kickstarts the real game. Upon touching the item a beam of light will appear that takes the player to a dungeon, if they so choose. These are called shuffle dungeons, and they are named such because each floor is divided between the top and the bottom screens of the DS, which will change—or shuffle—independent of each other. The object is to not get shuffled off by staying on the side of the screen that’s changing, and to find the stairs to go down further down into the dungeon.

After getting all the way to the bottom floor, a boss battle takes place. Every boss plays differently, and most are action–oriented, third-person encounters. The player can find the town’s leader and reap the rewards of the boss’ hoarded treasure once it has been felled. When the townie is saved, they must be led out of the dungeon the same way the player came in.

Let’s slow down for a second, roll up our sleeves, and dive into the mechanics a bit, because this is where the game gets quite unique. In the town, which acts as the main overworld, the game has a 3D perspective, which appear reminiscent of early PS1/Saturn-style games: large blocky solid-colored polygons. It’s charming, to say the least. The shuffle dungeons are all 2D sprites and control very simply—a button for attacking, and a button for using spell-oriented fupongs (which we’ll get to in a bit)—which allow for the player to focus on the puzzle aspect of the shifting map. The boss fights control exactly like the dungeons, but they have the same perspective as the overworld.

Another important part of the game happens between the dungeons. Many of the early people rescued from AWAY’s dungeons (in the same way as the town leader) will need to rebuild their shops once they get to safety, which you can subsequently use to supply yourself with armor, weapons, or items. Once the shops are rebuilt, the player gets to choose where on the island they are placed. The options are all for the same area, but based on the location they may get less “customers,” which will limit their stock, or more “customers,” which results in cheaper prices. The shops also level up, offering more items to the player; location also determines the speed of leveling. To level up, the shops the player needs to find specific materials in the dungeons to sell to the shop owners, with the proper amount of materials resulting in an increase of their stock. There’s also one other thing that players will level up in the dungeons: fupongs.

Fupongs are small bouncing blobs which are able to cast different spells, based on their color (i.e. a red one casts a fireball, a green one will heal the player, etc.). Different fupongs live in different dungeons, and almost all start as level one fupongs. There are a few ways to increase the level of a fupong, which will increase both the power of their abilities and the amount of uses. One method is to find food in the dungeons that you can later feed to them. The other way is to combine them with similar fupongs. They change in size and shape once they level up, which makes them easy to recognize in the dungeons.  Not a bad addition, really.

Now that all the basics have been laid out, you can see that there’s not much tying AWAY to standard RPGs. The different elements of the game really come together well to keep the pace and style constantly changing. It’s very different from most of Mistwalker’s other games, and a nice change of pace.

Overall: 7.5/10