Tag: Puzzle

Professor Layton Puzzle Master Passes Away At 90

by Matt Rodriguez

Akira Tago, “puzzle master” of the Professor Layton series has passed away due to interstitial pneumonia on March 6, at the age of 90.  He is credited of being the “puzzle master” in every Layton game, as well as responsible for the best-selling quiz book, “Atama no Taiso” (Brain Exercises in 1966).  According to Eurogamer in 2014, the entire Professor Layton series is inspired by Tago’s work.

Professor Layton is the beloved Nintendo exclusive puzzle franchise developed by Level-5, that follows a professor from London into some of the most daring mysteries of his world.  The mysteries are solved in Sherlock fashion, using point and click mechanics to unveil secrets, and frequently solving puzzles for villagers, major characters, and even boss battles.  There was even a rare crossover game called “Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright” pitting Level-5’s and Capcom’s iconic puzzle characters into a clash of wit with each other.

Our hats, are off to you, Akira Tago!  You were a true gentleman in every sense of the word, and we know that Professor Layton won’t be the same without you.  Rest in Peace.

Source: IGN

 

Geekscape Games Reviews: ‘Life Goes On’

by MoreLikeAndy

Death has always been a form a punishment in video games. The lingering fear of starting an area over again from a poorly placed checkpoint after spending hours getting to end of a level is frustrating to endure. What if death was not a form of punishment but instead, required in order to proceed. Well, Life Goes On does just that with hilarious results.

Life Goes On is a 2D puzzle platformer that has endless streams of loyal knights carrying out the king’s request; acquiring the Cup of Life at the end of each level. Putting these unlimited lives to use will be essential to solve puzzling challenges that lie ahead. While the first handful of levels get you acclimated to the controls and concepts of how to use the sacrificial lambs, things start to ramp up as you progress. There are timers and a death count tally set in place to compete against to see how efficient you can complete each challenge. Unfortunately, there is no penalty for failing the time limit or death count as you can move on to the next level regardless of how long you spent sending knights to their doom.

life goes on

Having no limitations on progression is actually a liberating thing in Life Goes On. This leaves everyone to experiment with their own extravagant notions on creative ways to complete each puzzle. Or, you can be like me and see how many bodies you can pile up in one area. With all sorts of contraptions littered among the levels, a lot of silly fun can be had. Conveyor belts with spikes, plumes of fire, electrical conduits and cold air blasts that freeze on contact are just some of the wonderful hazards to play with. Piling up bodies on a spiked conveyor belt so I can walk with ease across my fallen brothers is much more satisfying than precariously leaping on one single husk to the other side.

life goes on

If you think the challenge not being present ruins any point of playing Life Goes On, you are sorely mistaken. Just figuring out how to get past some of the later levels are more than challenging enough. One level has multiple checkpoints where you will respawn after death. In order to retrieve the chalice, you must manipulate multiple switches in the right order as well as activating the right checkpoints. If that sounds like childs play to you, well there are other levels that will test your dexterity at traversing platforms. Freezing a body, respawning at a checkpoint, hustling over to the moving ice block and jumping off said ice block in mere seconds is just some of the difficult things needed to accomplish success over each puzzle.

Life Goes On is a simple yet challenging puzzle-solving platformer that is a blast to play in short bursts. Having no repercussions for lollygagging around while flinging countless bodies to their doom may hinder any sense of reward for some. For the rest though, finding out what other elaborate contraptions Infinite Monkeys has designed for us all is a reward all in its own.

Score: 3/5

Get Hairy Balls In Your Hands Via Your iOS Device!

by Derek Kraneveldt

I received an interesting email in my inbox this morning: the subject was simply “Get Hairy Balls Now!” I thought it was simply Jonathan being Jonathan, but not this time.

Turns out there’s a new game available on the iOS App Store, aptly titled Hairy Balls. 

The game comes from Australian developer Redtribe, and after putting a couple hours into it, I’m actually having a lot of fun. Thankfully, the game has nothing to do with testicles. Instead, the “Hairy Balls” are simply hairy, spherical creatures. These hairy balls are hungry, and it’s up to you to get them to the appropriate food source! Check out the trailer and gameplay video below to get a better idea of the game:

 The developer is obviously playing around with the title a lot, as I found myself immaturely laughing more than once during that trailer. 

Basically, you need to get each ball onto the appropriately colored mushroom in a set amount of turns for each stage. It sounds simple, but the difficulty ramps up rather quickly. You can of course play each stage as many times as you need to solve it, and you also have hints available to you, which is where the developers introduced a really genius element.

You see, Hairy Balls is a free download. If you’re extremely logical (or persistent), you’ll be able to play through all 66 stages without paying a penny. If you need to use hints to progress, that’s where Hairy Balls will cost you. You start the game with a few free hints to get you going, and after that you’ll be buying hint packs through in-app purchases. Genius, and extremely fair in my opinion.

Redtribe states that the game is addicting, and I would definitely have to agree with them. I downloaded the title this morning to give it a quick try before work, but found myself returning many times throughout the day, eager to get through another stage or two. I managed my way through nearly 20 before I needed to use my hints.

The game looks and sounds great on both the iPhone and iPad. The game is bright and colorful, with high resolution, detailed sprites and a catchy upbeat soundtrack. I must commend Redtribe for including iCloud support in the game as well: progress is synced quickly and automatically between my iPhone and iPad, so I can play on whatever device I choose.

The only technical complaint I have with Hairy Balls is that the game doesn’t support the larger screen of the iPhone 5 or 5th Generation iPod Touch, an issue that I’m sure Redtribe will quickly resolve. It would simply work better and give you a closer view of the action if the game were to take up the whole screen.

Hairy Balls is a title that I can see people coming back to again and again. Whether you’ve only got a few minutes or an hour, you’re going to have enough time to make some progress. The cute visuals and upbeat audio also make the game a great learning tool for kids – the game gets hard, but could teach youngsters logical and critical thinking like few others can.

I have no problem recommending that you give Hairy Balls a download. It’s free and it’s fun, even with the awkward title. Just make sure that if someone asks what you’re doing, you tell them you’re playing Hairy Balls.

Hairy Balls scores a fuzzy 3.5/5. It’s not the best puzzle game available right now, but the price is right, and it’s nearly as addicting as they claim!

You can download Hairy Balls here!

Geekscape Games Reviews XBLA Puzzler “The Splatters”!

by MoreLikeAndy

The Splatters sounds like the name of a performance act on America’s Got Talent. Instead, it’s a physics-based puzzle game by SpikySnail Games. It seems as though April is the month of XBLA puzzle games this year. With the choices we have this month, The Splatters should be one of them on your list.

Take the simplicity of Angry Birds, add color coding, subsets of special moves that you can pull off and you have yourself The Splatters. Controlling the blob-like creatures and propelling them into the environment to explode and have their remains cover the bombs in the level is the main goal in The Splatters. Starting out, I wasn’t that excited for how the game was presenting the puzzles to me. It was a little too easy. I know, you have to ease people into your mechanics of the game, usually having the first couple of levels being the tutorial. Then I found myself at the end of the main puzzles after only a couple of hours! Where did my time go? Was I having that much fun with the puzzles that I never noticed that I was way past the tutorial phase?

What made the time go by so fast in the main puzzles is my only gripe with The Splatters. About every five puzzles or so, another ability was introduced. It never felt like I was given the freedom to just try out all the crazy abilities I was given without another tutorial explaining the next ability I unlocked. Once you get the final ability, the main puzzles just sort of end. It would have been better to have a lot more puzzles at the end instead of letting the player go back to earlier levels to use the new abilities to get a higher score and three star that puzzle.

There are two other modes to satisfy your puzzle solving appetite in the form of Master Shots and Combo Nation. No leaderboards are in Master Shots mode which makes it hard to want to do well if there is no incentive to climb to the top of your friends list. Combo Nation is like the name implies, try to get your combo multiplier as high as possible using all your abilities to get the highest score on that puzzle. Good luck with that too since after seeing some of the videos you can watch from others in Splatter TV, I wondered if these top players on the leaderboards ever go outside instead of playing this game all day to figure out the best way to get the highest combo score. I am just happy to upload my video if I get all the bombs in one run.

I know most people are looking towards Fez and Trials Evolution this month in lieu of The Splatters but I implore you to give it a shot since it is an interesting take on the physics-based puzzle genre and represents a decent amount of fun to be had.