Not Just Another Puzzle Puts Your Brain And Reflexes To Work
Not Just Another Puzzle ($0.99) by World Of A is literally just that -- a combination of a physics-based game and a puzzle.
This game is definitely not for the faint of heart.
Select a puzzle from one of the four difficulty settings (toddler to genius). The goal is to match the square or rectangular blocks against a picture with grayed-out sections.
Touch the pieces by one of the corners to spin them to the correct orientation or to place them within the hand-drawn containers. That's the puzzle part of this game. The physics-based part comes in the form of gravity and moving obstacles.
There isn't a formal tutorial (just little hints between games, especially in the toddler difficulty), but the learning curve is mostly a slope. The real challenge is figuring out how to finish the puzzle.
Solving puzzles takes a little bit of planning ahead and a lot of patience. A majority of them are crafted in such a way that placing pieces too early results in boxing yourself in which prevents adding other pieces that need to go below.
Most of the time the pieces are all jumbled, and you'll need to fling the others out of the way or tuck them in one of the corners until you actually need them.
The look of this app is great. All of the various pictures are visually engaging, and the easier levels provide points of reference for placing the puzzle pieces.
Each piece is scored with some form of pencil mark (either lines or hash marks). At first I thought it was just to add to the app's aesthetics, but then I realized that the correctly placed pieces almost become invisible against the picture.
The main thing that I find lacking in this app is some sort of congratulations or fanfare for finishing the puzzle. After all the hard work and determination, the completed puzzle will just sit there until your hit the menu button.
It'd be nice for the app to at least acknowledge that all of the pieces have been placed correctly.
This game is definitely a departure from a standard puzzle, and those looking for a mental exercise are welcomed to step up and give it a try.
