Puzzle games abound in the iTunes App Store. That fact is well established. However, which ones deserve your hard-earned cash? We recently took a look at the offerings and have chosen five new iPhone puzzlers that are worth your dollar. Here are our findings.
Cross Fingers, by Mobigames, introduces gameplay where players must refit wooden shapes into preset slots. There are two types of shapes, light wood and red wood that must be dealt with. While light wood pieces slide and stay in place, red pieces must be held in place as other pieces are arranged around them. If players let go prematurely, the red shapes will return to their previous location. This clever feature grants Cross Fingers its name. Fingers must be twisted in order to hold the red piece in place while other shapes are reordered to solve the puzzle.
Pocketball is built on the Box2D physics engine. In this game, players start with balls that drop at predefined points, and they have to fall into colored pockets. Draw ropes between pegs, which bounce the balls at different angles according to gravity. To complicate things, there are obstacles carefully placed to stump you: bombs that destroy nearby balls, gravity wells, and arrows that push balls in a direction.
Implode contains 60 levels of buildings, just begging to be reduced to rubble. Each level presents you with the drawing of a building on a chalkboard, with only the support beams visible. You are also given a limited number of bundles of dynamite or blast bombs. These explosives must be placed upon the support beams in a configuration that, when detonated, will cause the building to crumble upon itself, with the highest point of the inevitable pile of rubble below an artificial dotted line. If you are unable to drop the building below the line, you fail and must retry the level. If you succeed, you receive a letter grade (just like in school) and a point total, comprised of Explosion Points, a Height Bonus, an Unused Bomb Bonus, and a Difficulty Bonus. Each of these is converted into dollar amounts, for a total payout in each level. Achieving an A+ on any given level is quite a challenge that will require much tweaking of explosive placement. Progressing through the game will expose you to new challenges, such as beams upon which no bombs can be placed or structures supported by a surprising number of beams, making them harder to bring down.
Famous puzzle creator Dr. Knizia, has released his latest iPhone creation in the form of Monumental, a Mayan themed game. Players must arrange stones within a pair of 3 x 4 grids. Stones, which are randomly presented, must be placed in either of these grids with the goal of making matches. These stones are categorized by color , symbol, and the number of symbols on their faces. As an example of gameplay, players attempt to have three stones that match color, symbol, and number of symbols in the same row. This would generate the highest score. However, this is a rare case. Points can be awarded even if only the colors, symbols, or number of symbols match though. An identical pair of stones in a row can also award points, even if the third stone doesn’t match any characteristic. Players must be aware of broken stones too as these can only be matched by colors.
If you’re into word puzzle games, you might be into Wordigo, a new app by RiverEdge Game Company. Wordigo combines word creation with a hectic seven minute time limit. Unique to itself, Wordigo determines where you can build words and limits each board to a descending seven minute clock. This keeps gameplay both quick and challenging. Wordigo contains eight puzzle boards, each presenting horizontal and vertical word arrangements. Think of a partial Scrabble board with several empty areas. The point of the game is to cleverly build words using the randomly generated letter tiles. Only upon completion of one word path, can players move on to the next. Scoring can be positively influenced by ingenious vowel placement.
We hope our review of some of the latest and greatest puzzle games give you an idea of what the App Store has to offer. These are simply five of the puzzlers that caught our eye. Regardless of your choice of one or all, we feel you’ll enjoy each puzzle’s unique characteristics.
If you’re interested in finding the best apple apps for the iPhone, visit our site now. Or if you just want to find the best app store, stop on by.
