Solve VideoPuzzle Before The Pieces Get Away From You
VideoPuzzle! ($0.99) by Ideateca is a slide puzzle game with quite the twist. Instead of just reassembling static pictures, this unique application also lets you solve pre-installed video puzzles, videos from your own camera roll, or even real-time video straight from your camera lens.
Just like any other slide puzzle, you need to swap tiles until they are all in the correct places. This gameplay is essentially the same whether using still pictures or moving video. An additional step VideoPuzzle! takes is scrambling the pieces so that some of them are flipped, and a doubletap is required to turn them right side up.
In any of the modes you can choose from easy, normal, hard, or extreme with each difficulty increasing the number of tiles scrambled. You are racing against the clock, but currently there isn’t integration with OpenFeint or Game Center. Save a simple star system, there isn’t any score keeping system at all, so you’ll need to whip out your own pen and paper to see if you are acheiving better solving times.
Even with the scoring limitations, VideoPuzzle! is a lot of fun and works well. Videos were processed and rendered glitch-free. If it took longer to assemble the puzzle than the video length, it would just seamlessly loop. When playing with real-time video, you can use either the front or back facing camera. I recommend the amusing experience of using the front camera and unscrambling your face.
Although the whole idea of using dynamic video in slide puzzles sounds unique and original, like many new apps in the app store, PuzzleVideo! isn’t the first of its kind. Fliparoni and Scrambleface are just a few of the several video puzzle apps available that preceded it. The latter even includes Game Center support. Still, VideoPuzzle! performs well and is half the cost of the others.
While VideoPuzzle! isn’t the first video slide puzzle, it comes at a great price, has exceptional gameplay, and is only limited by its inability to keep score. If this new take on an old game sounds interesting to you, try it out, you won’t be disappointed.
Editors Note: VideoPuzzle! was tested using an iPhone 4 and requires iOS 4.1 or higher. Using an iPod touch, iPad or another version of the iPhone may not include all of the features, and may yield different results.
