Crush3D: A Puzzle with Another Dimension is a puzzle-platformer by Sega and Kuju Entertainment that was originally published in 2007 for the PlayStation Portable. This release looks to be a direct port with a cartoonier aesthetic, but it was one of the more interesting 3DS games demoed at E3 this year.

In the Crush3D demo on display, I found myself navigating through three-dimensional cityscapes, essentially with the goal of getting from Point A to Point B while collecting some doodads along the way. The game's hook lies in its "crush" mechanic, in which the 3D environment is projected onto, or "crushed", into a 2D plane. The 2D plane the world is crushed into depends on the current camera angle, and the player can rotate the camera 90 degrees at a time for a different side view or a top-down view. This mathematical function allows for platforms that are far away in 3D space to be suddenly reachable in 2D space, and can transform large walls into trivial obstacles. The demo disallowed me from crushing or de-crushing the world in a manner that would have killed me, encouraging experimentation and exploration.

The tutorial levels on display were fairly straightforward, only challenging in that I had to find the right camera angle to progress. I am unfamiliar with the original, and therefore cannot speak to the full game's difficulty, but the game handled responsively and its crush mechanic holds promise. According to the representative on the show floor, there will not be any new levels added to the 3DS version. However, the 3DS game will include a new challenge mode, in which players must solve levels with a limited number of crushes. The 3DS release will also let players to trade gifts (e.g., collected clothing) over StreetPass.

In the game's still-panel cut scenes, the jokey banter between the main character and his mad scientist friend fell a bit flat, but otherwise I enjoyed what little I saw of Crush3D. The game was critically acclaimed on the PSP and should be a quality addition to the 3DS library.