Review: Temple Trap for iPhone and iPad

Temple Trap (also free) by SmartGames is a port of the physical puzzle by the same name.

I have already talked about the inventor of this puzzle, the Belgian Raf Peeters, in my review of Roadblock.
It is a sliding tile puzzle, with the additional twist that the tiles also form a maze, that your character needs to navigate through. If it were just that, it wouldn't be very interesting, but there's a lot more.

Review: Disctrail for iPhone and iPad

Disctrail by the Swedish Knappra AB is an interactive version of a lesser-known traditional Japanese puzzle called Goishi Hiroi or Hiroimono.

Compared to most of the puzzle games available on the App Store, Goishi Hiroi is fiercely unintuitive, and it had me stumped initially. It took a lot of practice to make it finally click and be able to solve the puzzle without feeling I was moving at random.

The basic rule of the puzzle is: find a continuous path that connects all the discs. At every step, you can move to the closest available disc in one of the four main directions, but you can't go back in the direction where you came from.

Update: Qvoid 1.7.2

The excellent Qvoid has been recently updated, adding two more free bonus packs, for a total of 40 new puzzles.

I've played some of them and they are very nice: small and challenging, just like I like them.

So if you had to remove the game from your device, this is a good time to reinstall it. And of course, if you missed it entirely, wait no more and grab it right now.

©2013 Nicola Salmoria. Unauthorized use and/or duplication without express and written permission is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicola Salmoria and nontrivialgames.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Review: Shapes: A Colorful Challenge for iPhone and iPad

Shapes: A Colorful Challenge is not based on an original idea, but I like its simple mechanics. It would greatly benefit from better graphics, however.

You start with an image composed of colored areas, some of which contain one or more balloons. When you tap a balloon, it disappears and transfers its color to the area it sits on. If adjacent areas have the same color, they merge. The goal is to end with the whole shape of a single color.

Review: Woven for iPhone and iPad

Woven by Eilean Design was released just a few days after the very similar Strata, but is different enough to deserve its own review.

Interestingly, when Tom Cutrofello reviewed this game on his blog, I commented saying that it is better than Strata because there isn't a mechanical way to solve the puzzles. I couldn't be farther from the truth. More on this later.

New blog about puzzles

Glenn A. Iba, mathematician and author of the excellent Monorail, recently started writing a blog where he talks about himself and logic puzzle design. If you are curious about the minds that create the games we love, go take a look.

©2013 Nicola Salmoria. Unauthorized use and/or duplication without express and written permission is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicola Salmoria and nontrivialgames.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Review: Willa's Walk for iPhone and iPad

When I reviewed Sherlock by Everett Kaser, I checked the screenshots of his other games for PC and Mac and thought that the most interesting seemed to be Willa's Walk. I was therefore happy to see that it was precisely the next game that was ported to iOS.

My gut feeling was right: as a logic puzzle, Willa's Walk is excellent. As an iPhone app, however, it's horrible, featuring a sluggish and confusing interface.

Quick Look: Double Dynamo: A Matching & Rhythm Game for iPhone and iPad

Double Dynamo is not a logic puzzle, but the mechanics of this action/memory/rhythm game are nontrivial enough, and tickles the right parts of my brain, so it's worth a mention.

The best way to explain the game is the official trailer:

As you can see, the game boils down to tapping a button when the objects in the boxes match. There are two things that make this tricky:

Review: Eight8Tiles for iPhone and iPad

Eight8Tiles is one of those games where half of the puzzle is figuring out the rules.

I therefore cannot say much about it without spoiling the fun of solving it yourself.