The Best New Puzzlers For The iPhone And iPod Touch

November 28th, 2009 by Eric Meister Leave a reply »

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 dares players to rearrange wooden shapes to cover a dark background. Shapes can be dragged into place one by one. Two styles of shapes are present, light colored wood and red wood. Red wood pieces bring some difficulty as that cannot stay in place without being help there. If let go of, they will slide back to their previous position. Players are required to hold these red pieces in place while moving other pieces around them. Hence, the app Cross Fingers gets its name. You must twist your fingers to hold the red pieces while arranging the light wooden shapes around them.

Bringing a bit of a physics theme to the table, Pocketball is a puzzle game that is built on the Box2D engine. The goal in this game is to guide balls into specific pockets in each board. Influenced by gravity, balls are drop from above and must be aimed around the board by ropes. Players draw ropes between pegs to bounce balls in a sort of geometric maze. As the puzzles progress, obstacles are introduced that complicate things. Bombs will destroy balls outright, while gravity wells pull balls toward oblivion. Arrows can work for or against players as they push balls around the screen when touched.

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.

We don’t want to leave out word puzzle games. Wordigo fits this genre nicely as it pressures players to creatively build words while undergoing a strict seven minute time limit. This brings a level of complexity and brevity to each game session. Wordigo houses eight word puzzle board that all require horizontal and vertical letter tile placement. The layout may remind you of a Scrabble board with many empty areas. Players must reach the goal of cleverly building words using the limited selection of randomized letter tiles. Succession to the next word path can only be had by completing the current path. The scoring system can be positively influenced by proper 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.

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