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Tag: Puzzle

Weekly Gaming: A good Snowman is Hard to Build (iOS)

Like clockwork, it’s another friday, so that means another game to review! This week I take a look at A Good Snowman is Hard to Build, a game I bought when it was on sale due to a snow day here in the UK. So without further ado, here’s my thoughts on the game.

First up, AGSIHTB grabs your attention from the offset due to it’s absolutely charming design, and sweet animation. No matter how long you play the game, you’ll consistently be surprised at how cute the game is, especially given how few assets are on display here. Each snowman/woman you successfully create has its own unique look, leading you to believe they have their own personalities, despite them being technically inanimate objects. It’s charming, and down right amazing in your entire time with the game.

So, I should probably at this point talk about the game’s core loop. So here’s to elevator pitch: AGSIHTB is a puzzle game where you must explore a maze, creating snowpeople as you go along. Each section of the maze will be a different shaped room, which restricts you in your ability to create the snowpeople, leading you to think of different ways to the solution. Each room usually starts off with 3 snowballs – roll a snowball over a patch of snow and it’ll create a slightly larger boulder. Roll once more and you’ll get the maximum size. You must pile 1 small, 1 medium, and 1 large snowball on top of each other to finish a room, which is a lot harder than it sounds.

You see, medium sized snowballs CANNOT touch another piece of snow without becoming bigger, meaning you’re constantly watching and analysing rooms to see how you can make 1 large boulder, whilst avoiding snow to ensure the others don’t get any bigger. This complication can be irritating as hell at times, but the feeling of elation you get when solving a difficult room is exhilarating, enough to keep me playing throughout one day to the games completion.

Outside of building snowpeople, there’s not much more to do around the environment. You can sit on benches, hug completed snowpeople, and look through telescopes to see the whole map, but other than that, you’re stuck with just solving puzzles.

There’s not much to say in regards to the music – it’s cute, and is there, but otherwise, you’re more than welcome to play the game on silent on your mobile, or whilst listening to an audiobook. I personally played the game whilst watching youtube videos, which was perfect, as I was able to execute a guess at a puzzle, and whilst the person was animated in doing that action, I could then continue watching the TV.

There’s no story to speak off – you wonder around, create snowpeople who each have names and different accessories, and finish the game once you’ve completed each puzzle. There’s more after you’ve completed it all, but I shan’t go into that as I don’t want to spoil the surprise.

So overall, I know I haven’t written much, but that’s because AGSIHTB is to the point and genuinely lovely to play. Some would say the lack of anything else to do would be a detriment to the game, but I feel it made AGSIHTB all the more better for being a purely cute puzzle game. If you fancy a game on the go, and love puzzle games based on moving things around a given space, then A Good Snowman Is Hard to Build is the game for you.

4/5

19/01/2018
Weekly Gaming: The Witness (PS4 Pro)

I’ve been wanting to play The Witness ever since Ryan Davis talked about it years ago. He, and Brad Shoemaker, managed to get a secret tour of Jonathan Blow’s studio years before the game even had a proper name. Everything the guys said about the game sounded right up my street – an entire island made up of little puzzles where they all interconnect with each other and expand on each others rules sounded amazing.

Suffice to say, after 30+ hours in the game with my other half, The witness delivered on most, if not all promises that were made in the run up to the game’s release, and in interviews afterwards.

So what is The Witness? Simply put, it’s a walking simulator whereby you walk around an island and solve line puzzles. If anything, that simplification may actually be doing something of a disservice to The Witness, because it’s so much more.

You start off in a tunnel, where the only way your player can go is forward. From the very offset, The Witness is telling you that there’ll be no hand-holding in this adventure, with everything you need to know being conveyed using the world and the environment itself. This point is pushed home not just 5 seconds later, when you come across a door which has the first puzzle you need to solve on. Before you can begin the game properly, you need to press X on the first puzzle, which is impossible to fail. On this first board/screen, you’re presented with a simple line – at one end, a circle, at the other, the end of the line. Simply pressing X within the circle at the left begins a line to wherever you direct it – pressing X again once you’ve directed the line to the end solves the puzzle. Simple right?

Well, whilst it starts off simple, this premise soon gets expanded upon no end, with other boards adding symbols or colours to represent new untold rules. These new rules will always be introduced in a nice, gentle manner; similar to the way the first ever puzzle was introduced. Once you start to get used to a new rule, the proceeding puzzles will push your knowledge of this new rule to the limit, even pushing you so far as to combine your knowledge of other puzzles too. This introduction -> expansion -> mastery loop is genuinely fantastic, and constantly makes you feel like a genius each time you master a new rule. There are times where a few guesses will successfully get you through a few puzzles, but these moments , if anything, help you to master a new rule even more – as you’re constantly looking at why your guesses succeeded, and what the difference is between new puzzles.

I seem to have gotten ahead of myself a little – as I haven’t explained why you’re solving these puzzles. The genuine answer is intrigue. As per the core gameplay loop whereby nothing is explained and it’s up to you to figure out the meaning of the puzzles, the same happens on the island you play upon. As you explore and walk around the island finding new boards, you’ll notice little structures and untold stories – all of which are, as their names imply, completely untold. It’s up to you to decide, or interpret what happened on this island, and why all these boards exist.

On top of this, there’s many hidden tapes to find throughout the island. When found and activated, the tapes go ahead and play a fantastic, and somewhat unrelated speech by a philosopher or scientist in the real world. Whilst I enjoyed finding this hidden tapes, my other half was certainly confused, and found their presence annoying, as she couldn’t make sense as to why they existed. For what it’s worth, whilst I agree they felt a little abstract, I enjoyed listening to these thought provoking statements whilst stretching my brains capacity in trying to figure out puzzle solutions.

The island you explore is huge, and the amount of variety in the puzzles you find is insane! I was about to go into detail in how they all differentiate from each other, but I feel in knowing what to look out for would ruin the surprise and satisfaction you get from learning a puzzles rule by yourself. Don’t take these words lightly; The Witness will have you feeling like an idiot, and a genius, all at the same time.

Graphically, The Witness is stunning. Minimalism is the theme here, but it’s not minimalism without detail. Everything on the island is bright and saturated to high heaven, with geometry standing out to make sure you notice subtle environment cues which could help solve puzzles. It’s not a stretch to say that any screenshot you take within The Witness is frame-able, with stunning views and amazing attention to detail even in every nook and cranny. All this stunning art on display becomes all the more vibrant on a PS4 Pro with a 4K HDR screen – so much so that when I tried to play the game again on PC I couldn’t get over how much of a difference the transition made.

There is one cause for concern – the core of the game itself. Whilst I personally loved the theme of The Witness, and lavished every moment I spent figuring out puzzles or exploring, I can see why for some people this type of game would rub them up completely the wrong way. The lack of instructions, direction, or anything to propel you along any given path can be seen as a disadvantage to some gamers. Bear this in mind if you find “walking simulators” like Dear Esther a little too dull or non-linear.

So should you go out and buy a copy of the Witness? Wholeheartedly yes. Even if it’s just to experiment with a puzzle game to see how far you can get, The Witness pushes the limit of what it means to be a puzzle game, making you as a player feel simultaneously clever, and stupid, all at once. I didn’t finish every puzzle in the game, and certainly didn’t find all the island had to offer me, but I know for a fact I’ll keep coming back to The Witness, just to chip away at it time and time again.

5/5

16/06/2017
Weekly Gaming: 1010 (iOS)

I’ve been going around my friends house a lot lately and watching Fairy Tail with him and his sister. On one of these days, his sister happened to be playing a game that looked like Tetris on her iPad at the corner of my eye. Seeing her pic this intriguing game up now and then to give it another go piqued my interest, so I asked her what game it was and set about downloading it.

It always starts off well like this, but it’s your own desire to keep everything neat and tidy that’ll be your downfall.

That game in question is 1010!, a puzzle/strategy game where the only obstacle is yourself. The game starts off simple enough: you have a blank grid taking up theist majority of the screen, with three tetriminos at the bottom. It’s your task to put these tertiminos anywhere you would like on the screen, trying to make lines (either horizontally or vertically) to destroy them. Should you not be able to put a tetrimino on the grid its game over.

The first couple of times you play the game, chances are you’ll try and sign everything up so it looks perfect and straight, just like you would in Tetris. Problem is (as you’ll soon find out) making everything look lovely does not mean you’ll have a good game. There were many times where I would make it so that all I needed was a straight piece, then find the next three tetriminos all being shapes other than I needed, ending the game.

Get used to this screen, you’ll be seeing it a lot

You soon start to realise (and master) that in order to do well in 1010! you must get rid of lines as soon as they appear. Yes, in doing so you’ll have a messy board with shapes and remnants of tetriminos sticking out all over the place, but at the end of the day the more space you have to play with, the easier life will be when it comes to sticking the new tetriminos on the grid.

It’s such a simple game, but is both a blast to play, and sticks to the design philosophy I love so much: keep it simple but hard. The only obstacle in this game is yourself; should you start organising everything neatly, you only have yourself to blame when the next random tile comes on screen that you can’t place.

This is getting a little too crowded for my comfort…

Your score goes up for each tetrimino that you place on the grid, with destroying a line netting you more points. It’s your objective to last as long as possible, which is why being neat and tidy is not a good idea for survivability, and why I was finally able to beat my friends sisters high-score after a few hours of constant retrying.

The games addictive, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s simple, but damn well bloody hard, and you only have yourself to blame should anything cock up. You might spend the first couple of tries blaming the game when you have nowhere else to place tetriminos, but you soon start to realise; it’s all you.

1010! is free on iOS and Android, with the option to pay for the in-game ads to disappear. I found I needed to spend that £1.49, as the ads take up 5-10 seconds of your time between games, when all you want to do is jump straight back in after your own idiocy got you killed.

4/5

15/04/2016
Gaming Week 9: The Room (iOS)
The Room started off as a interest at first for me. After hearing Brad Shoemaker talk about it on the Giant Bombcast, I thought I’d give the iPhone game a go. I’m a firm believer that iPhone/portable games should be centred around challenges, and not be a cinematic experience that you can get on consoles. (Something I even researched and presented at my final year of uni.) The Room doesn’t break any ground in my thinking, but does offer a very entertaining experience for people of all backgrounds.

The Room is a puzzle game for iOS devices. For iPhone you get the first chapter for free (then have to pay £1.49 to continue) and for the iPad you have to pay £1.49 up front. For a game of it’s length (about 2 hours) this is a fair price, but from the sounds of things, there’ll be more content in coming weeks.

The beginning safe, not that interesting, but it gets better!

You start The Room with a safe in front of you. This safe can eventually be opened using only the materials around the safe itself. Each chapter/stage is another box within the safe which can then be opened to reveal another box. This is the structure of the game, one puzzle then leads onto another, more perplexing puzzle.

Puzzles are varied, and everything interconnects, so when a puzzle suddenly clicks, you feel like a genius, easily popping from side to side of the box to solve each solution. It’s a fantastic feeling, that entrances the player and keeps you going.

Puzzle solutions generally lead you to solve another mystery straight after.

There is a story to The Room, albeit it’s very vague. You come across letters throughout each box, which tell of a previous man that done the same as yourself. It’s a nice touch which at least suggests there’s more to this world than what meets the eye. Hopefully in the future we’ll get more levels which dig deeper into the fiction of this world.

Pros:
- Fantastic Puzzler
- Great Graphics for a iOS game
Cons:
- Very Short
- Recommended to be played on iPad if possible (iPhone screen a tad bit small)
Overall The Room is a great buy for anyone looking for something to kill a few hours on their mobile device. It won’t be cinematic immersive, but will keep you immersed for that short amount of time due to the challenge of the puzzle.

4/5
01/03/2013