if you have never heard of the Winx club video games well I hadn’t heard of them either they were a group of 12 video games released between 2005 to 2014 on multiple platforms but what what were they like well the floor is yours Power of Charmix

Winx Club has a lot of different types of merchandise, from clothes to picture books, and the Winx products that I’ve always been most intrigued by are the video games. I know there are lots of Winx games out there, but I personally have only played one of them – Winx Club: Saving Alfea for the Nintendo DS. I recently replayed it for the first time in a while, and I thought I would share my opinion of the game. Is this game a secret legend, or a quickly-forgotten tall tale? Let’s find out.

 

In Saving Alfea, the titular college for fairies is having an anniversary party, and the Winx are trying to gather different decorations and supplies that they need – balloons, lights, music, etc. While the Winx are distracted, Selina takes the opportunity to sneak into the school, in search of an artifact called the Siphonix talisman. She uses her Legendarium creatures to obstruct the Winx and delay them from discovering her scheme. It’s up to the player and the Winx to find out what Selina is planning and stop her before she devises a way to summon Legendarium monsters infinitely. 

 

Saving Alfea is a simplistic, but functional, 2D platformer. The player gets to control all six Winx. In the early levels, you’re forced to play as specific characters, but later you can switch between all the fairies freely. Each level has you playing as a Winx either in her civilian form, or as a Bloomix fairy. 

 

In the civilian levels, you use the B button to jump and A to interact with objects. Pressing Y allows each girl to use their magic for a special ability:

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• Bloom
•  can uncover hidden or invisible objects.
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• Stella
•  uses light to destroy normally impassable walls of dark magic.
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• Flora
•  can make certain plants grow, forming either an extra platform to stand on, or a bridge to walk across.
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• Musa
•  causes a spontaneous disco party that is so epic, all of the enemies just have to stop and dance to it for a few seconds, allowing the player to walk past them.
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• Tecna
•  creates a hologram of herself and sends it walking in a different direction, tricking the enemies into attacking it instead of the player.
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• Aisha
•  can cause certain Morphix-covered platforms to move either vertically or horizontally. She also generally has a higher jump than the other Winx.
•  

 

The special powers all have a recharge time before you can use them again, but it’s not that long of a wait. The goal of the civilian levels is to obtain a certain key item and make your way to the level’s exit. There’s a lot more emphasis on platforming and exploring the levels, and there’s no combat. Your only method of dealing with enemies is to use Musa and Tecna’s abilities. The civilian levels tend to be less linear, and more open to exploration. In addition to the key item, every level in the game has a bonus decoration you can find. These are more hidden in the civilian levels, and a little more straightforward to find when you’re in fairy mode.

 

In the Bloomix levels, most of the platforming elements disappear, due to you being a fairy and being able to just fly over everything. The Y button performs a basic magic beam attack, and the X button lets each Winx use another special skill:

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• Bloom
•  unleashes a really powerful fireball attack.
•  
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• Stella
•  releases a burst of light that slows down enemies.
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• Flora
•  summons vines that will immobilize any enemies on the ground or platforms.
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• Musa
•  creates a sound blast that freezes nearby enemies.
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• Tecna
•  summons a techno-shield around herself that prevents her from taking damage for several seconds.
•  
•  
• Aisha
•  forms a Morphix wall that blocks all enemies and projectiles.
•  

 

Like the civilian powers, these too require time to recharge after use. The Bloomix levels are much more combat-oriented. Enemies are, quite often, everywhere. There are even segments where you’re trapped in an area and can’t leave until you’ve defeated all the baddies nearby. All of the enemies are various Legendarium monsters from the show, such as the basilisks, the Gloomy Wood trolls, and the pandemonium sprites.

 

The levels are actually really fun to play. The game takes place across four areas – Alfea, Lynphea, Melody, and Zenith. The levels are fairly standard, with no groundbreaking design elements. Despite that, I do like the attention that was given to the spritework and general level design. The Alfea levels are the least creatively designed, but the other levels did surprise me a bit.

 

Aesthetically, the areas look alright, and match the show pretty well. The Alfea levels have you jumping around the outside of the college, Lynphea is full of plants, Melody has a lot of dock-like wood platforms, and Zenith is all futuristic and purple and whatnot. But surprisingly, despite the areas looking different, most of the sprites never look out of place when they’re put inside the various areas. The developers were also smart about where to put their game mechanics. For example, they never put any plants for Flora to grow in the Zenith levels, because having a plant in the techno-world would look very, very weird. Also, one really tiny detail I liked involve the tiny spring pads you see in every level. They actually created separate sprites for the pad in every area – it’s purple on Zenith and green on Melody, and it looks like a small flower on Lynphea. I just found it amusing that the spring was so important, they created three different sprites for it, and just left all the other sprites the same.

 

Speaking of sprites, Saving Alfea looks very nice, especially when you consider the technical limitations of the DS. The backgrounds all evoke the spirit and aesthetic of the show, and look very clean. The sprites of the Winx all look nice, and are animated smoothly. In the cutscenes and the menus, the game uses stock art of the Winx and Selina from season six. I kind of wish they had gotten more than just one piece of art from Rainbow to use, as it can make the cutscenes kind of boring, but it still looks okay. The Legendarium monsters are recreated especially well from their show counterparts. All of the animations are smooth, and I never discovered any major graphical glitches. 

 

The game controls well, and its mechanics are pretty fun. One minor complaint I have is that you have to switch characters using the touch screen, while all the action is happening above. This can be a bit distracting and annoying, especially in the later levels, when you have to switch between characters quite frequently. I can’t really think of a better input for this mechanic, so I can’t complain too much, but it was a little annoying at times.

 

Though the levels are kind of easy at the beginning, they reach a decent amount of difficulty towards the end. It was never excessively hard, but there was actually a bit of challenge, both in the platforming and the combat. I imagine it would be even harder if you were younger and in the game’s target audience. I also like how all of the characters are balanced well – at least, in the civilian modes. Each girl’s special power has its own use, and you have to use all of them to progress. In the Bloomix levels, though,  you can basically play as whoever you want.

 

As you move through the levels, you collect…orange glowing balls, I guess? I don’t know what to call them. Anyway, they form the game’s points system. If you gather enough points, you can get a level up. Each new level comes with a small bonus, such as giving you more health or shortening the recharge time of your special powers.

 

The sound effects are really charming – I especially love the little “pew” that plays when you use your beam attack. The music is also very pleasing to the ear. Three of the six tracks are remixes of other Winx songs – “Winx Rising Up Together”, “Bloomix The Power of The Dragon”, and “The Legendarium World of Mythix”. For the levels on Melody, Zenith, and Lynphea, there are actually original songs – or, at least, songs that I didn’t recognize. They’re all nice to listen to, and fit in with the remixes well. My favorite is the Lynphea song. It’s very peppy and exciting.

Overall, Saving Alfea isn’t a revolutionary game, but I think its goal is to emulate the show, and it does that pretty well. It’s fun to play, and even a little challenging at times, and it looks and sounds very nice. If you see Saving Alfea on sale somewhere, I would definitely recommend that you play it for yourself.

Thank you to Power of Charmix for this brilliant guest post and I’ll admit I have been trying to no avail sadly to get this game but have you play this or any of the 12 winx club video games that have been released and I’ll see you all next time