Game Review: Winx Club: Alfea Butterflix Adventures (Xbox One)

Winx Club is an incredibly successful animated television series that is now broadcast in over 130 different countries & has become a media franchise with toys, clothes & games. Many of which you’ll find on the mobile market. Many of which are free to play games with exorbitant in-app purchases.

Including this one. Yes, Winx Club: Alfea Butterflix Adventures was originally a mobile game that can be picked up for £1.99. Yet, for reasons that escape me it costs £7.99 on Xbox One. Now you might be thinking that it has had a graphical upgrade, been stream-lined for consoles & done away with in-app purchases. Sadly, you’d be wrong on all fronts.

Winx Club: Alfea Butterflix Adventures has the proud honour of being the worst game to be released on Xbox One. Barely functional, utterly devoid of charm or enjoyable gameplay & worst of all, packed with outrageous in-app purchases.

This is a game that is aimed exclusively at a younger market, one that is more likely to want to buy the different outfits for the characters (once unlocked). A market that is likely to think the cost of premium gems isn’t an unreasonable amount. Disgraceful behaviour from Tsumanga Studios especially as this game costs £7.99.

I’m not talking about the plot, there is barely one. The positives? Even less. Winx Club: Alfea Butterflix Adventures is such a mess that the only way to review it is to detail every single thing wrong with it in the hope of convincing no-one else to pick it up on a whim.

Ugly to look at, its visuals are PlayStation One levels of rubbish. The screen tears & clips constantly. Get too close to a wall or roof & it will disappear to reveal nothing. The bright colours attempt to draw you in with the promise of sweet candy but end up delivering nothing but a turd.

The game’s ‘missions’ involve you finding keys but give you no indication of where they are. There is no map & no guiding arrow. You just run around one of two small levels hoping to find an area you haven’t been to yet. Once you find a key, the game kicks you back out to the hub rather then let you carry on searching.

These levels are about as fun as having your teeth pulled out without anaesthetic. They may be small but without a map, traversing them to find hidden switches, is a nightmare. There isn’t much that can kill you in this game but you will die a lot. Simply because of the shockingly bad controls.

Your character controls like a tank when first moving before becoming too responsive. Jumping is hazardous to your health. Sometimes it doesn’t work, other times the character won’t jump as high as she can and on occasion she’ll stall in mid-air plunging you to your doom. In fact, the only way to really get anywhere with jumping is to take advantage of a glitch!

This glitch is called ‘the extra step’ as it allows your character to walk an extra step off a ledge before you hit the jump button ensuring you can make the leap you’re planning. Once you’ve got the hang of it, you’ll fly through the game.

It’s far from the games only glitch though. Nine times out of ten your character will get stuck in the ‘push’ animation after having moved a block. Breaking her out of it involves hammering the jump button until she stops.

There are two music tracks that loop constantly & hilariously even stop briefly as if the CD it was recorded from had just ended. Of these two tracks, the hub one is so bad that you’ll be reaching for the mute button while the other is actually kind of catchy. It’s the one positive that this game has up until you’ve heard it a hundred times.

If all of that wasn’t enough to convince you to stay away from Winx Club: Alfea Butterflix Adventures then the gem system will. There are several characters to unlock & different costumes for each. To even get the opportunity to buy one of these characters you first need to accumulate enough fans & find a required number of keys. Fans are gained by playing the game, the number increasing as you collect keys.

Once you’ve met the requirements you can then spend blue gems on unlocking the character. These are collected in the game but can also be bought with real money. The cheapest character to buy (and the only one required to get a specific key) costs 2000 gems. To give you an example; after 3 hours of play with most keys collected I had less then 300 gems. So, your choice is to either grind away or cough up real money.

Do you see why this game deserves to be called out for the trash it is? We here at Games, Brrraaains & A Head-Banging Life have no issue with in-app purchases as long as they obey these rules:

1. Your game is free to play – charging up front for something then wanting more for nothing is not on.
2. Your prices are reasonable – none of this £99.99 for a finite amount of gold/gems/stars.
3. The in-app purchase is rewarding – give value. It’s as simple as that.
4. The developer has done enough to warrant it – meaning make a decent game!

Winx Club: Alfea Butterflix Adventures does none of these things & everyone involved with this Xbox One port should be ashamed of themselves. Check out our video below to get the full idea of just how bad this game is.