Archive for August, 2009

I didn’t play as much Mr.AahH!! as I thought I would because I found myself unable to tear myself away from Puzzlings last night.

It’s a match-three, like Bejeweled, but instead of only being able to swap blocks that are next to each other you can drag long lines of tiles to swap and drag squares to rotate the blocks within them. You also get big blocks, that are harder to deal with and, when you fill your combo bar, you get pieces of a round object, which you have to put together. Put to together two of them and you win the stage. (Unless it’s a challenge stage which, I think, requires you to make four.)

Don’t worry, I may not be able to explain it very well, but it makes sense when you play.

You also get puzzle stages, where you have to remove all the blocks in the fewest number of moves possible. They’ve proven to be the hardest part of the game so far, but seem obvious as soon as you see the solution.

All the while, you’re earning new clothes, accessories and skins for your little avatar chap. You can see mine in the screen shots, to the left of the grid. If you like, you can go home and pose him in front of the camera.

It’s, I assume, meant to appeal to kids… but I’m thirty-six and the thing that keeps me playing is earning all these new ways to change how my avatar looks.

Well, no, that’s unfair. They’re a great bonus, but it’s the gameplay that really keeps me playing. The twists on the standard formula make the game a lot more interesting than many of its rivals. When I first started playing, I was only really using the rotate move to orient single pieces that I needed to face a certain way. The puzzle stages taught me how useful rotating could be in normal play and I’ve started, just started, to make it a part of my regular play.

If I have one complaint, it’s that I seem to be over half-way and haven’t really been troubled yet. I’ve got all the costume items from every level I’ve unlocked and, for the most part, I’ve got them the first time I’ve played. Still, there’s a way to go yet and even if it never gets very hard, I’ve still enjoyed myself an awful lot.

In short: Hooray for Puzzlings!