Advent Calendar: Puzzle Edition Reviews

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I wish every Sudoku game was a piece of chocolate. I will be generous though, because it's Christmas.

I mostly played the puzzles. They were very relaxing. I WANT the soundtrack!! I wish there could be an option for 60 pieces but maybe that can be for next year. I like the option to change the puzzle piece shapes somewhat. I went with the classic "knob" connections. I wish there were the option to have pieces rotated as an extra difficulty level. I also wish that matching pieces could be stuck together even if they're not correctly placed on the puzzle board yet. All of those little issues aside, I had a very relaxing time playing these in between my First-Person Shooters. I liked the other (match-up) games, too, although I avoided the Sudoku-style ones as they are just not always my thing. That's just a personal preference, though. Did I mention that I LOVE the puzzle soundtrack? I am going to ask if I can purchase it somewhere. Thanks, Steam, for a nice Christmas/Holiday game and a change of pace.

I loved the idea of this game, but it is not at all worth the price. Having played this, I wouldn't recommend this game unless you love pixel art puzzles and the game is on sale below $5. The pixel art games really dominated this game for me, although I'm not sure why since there aren't many. Over 25 days (or all at once, if you select the option to unlock them all immediately), you will get: [spoiler]- 15 levels of Match 3 games - 12 Jigsaw Puzzles - 10 Sudoku Puzzles - 4 Pixel Arts - 2 Number merging games called "2048" - 2 "Line Puzzles" The Match 3 games have a move counter (varying between 15-45 moves). You must complete certain goals before running out of moves. The Jigsaw Puzzles have a range of sizes from 30 pieces to 600 pieces. Ability to change the shape of the pieces, and ability to play in multiplayer. The cursor is clumsy, and there is a very limited "zoom" function. The Sudoku Puzzles are extremely easy, with no ability to change the difficulty. They are 9x9, but are so pre-filled that they present no challenge at all. The Pixel Art is very frustrating and not remotely fun. Much easier in singleplayer, as in multiplayer mode the screen moves slightly whenever you click a square - but luckily your cursor isn't affected by the other person's clicking. However the person using the mouse will still make the screen shift everytime they click. Additionally, in multiplayer both cursors must be within a certain range of each other, which can cause one cursor to get stuck if the other cursor has moved too far away. The "2048" games are number merging puzzles, where you must move all the numbered boxes in a direction, making identical numbers merge with each other. Another numbered square will appear every time you move the screen. The game ends when you run out of space, even if you can still make matches. The "Line Puzzle" games... I have no idea how to describe them. You must move shapes into empty squares in order to match 5 in a row. Every time you move a piece, more pieces are added. Each piece you move must have a clear path to the place you want to place it.[/spoiler]

I rarely write a negative review, but for the people like me, who saw it was 70% off and thought 'it must be worth that,' it's not. Forget the full price that's in the scam territory at that price, but even at $7 I except a certain level of graphics in a game. Here I neither get acceptable (not even good) graphics, either in the main select area, as the resolution is so bad it's fuzzy, nor in game. The Match 3, Sudoku, candy line graphics looks like it was out of my early 90's clip art. There is no attempt to put shadows on it to make it look like even a class B game. At the price point I was expecting at least 'christmas puzzle' (match 3, 2nd + 3rd game in series) standard of graphics not great but good enough. Forget bejewelled standard or anything from a class A developer. For a pure Christmas season game, there is one Christmas tree in the main area, albeit it fuzzy. After playing so many Christmas themed HOPAs with great graphics, great Christmas solitaire games etc with scenes you are spoiled for choice to take screenshots of and put on your profile. I was expecting OTT prolific abundance of lovely bright graphics and was sadly disappointed. When you open the game you are given the choice of being able to play all games at once, or choose the advent style of 1 game a day. The puzzles themselves are disappointing, they are highly repetitive. There are so many choices of different kinds of puzzles you can have, so limiting themselves to a handful was disappointing especially if you don't like one kind. Here are the puzzles you get (I will update this but am playing this in advent so haven't unlocked the rest yet.) Day 1 – Match 3 (ltd moves, 3 games) Day 2 – Jigsaw (2) Day 3 – Suduko (2) Day 4 – Pixel Art (1) Day 5 – 2048 Day 6 – Match 3 (ltd moves, 3 games) Day 7 – Suduko (2) Day 8 – Jigsaw (2) Day 9 – Candy Lines (1) (move icons to get 5 in a row, trying to not let the board get full or game over) Day 10 – Match 3 (ltd moves, 3 games) Day 11 – Pixel Art (1) Day 12 – Jigsaw (2) Day 13 – Suduko (2) Day 14 – match 3 (ltd moves 3 games) Day 15 – Pixel Art (1) Day 16 – Candy lines (1) Day 17 – Jigsaw (2) Day 18 – Suduko (2) Day 19 - Pixel Art (1) Day 20 - 2048 (this one, there is also the option of playing it in 'multiplayer' which gives you 2 different ones on the same screen, you can also play the usual singleplayer) Day 21 - Jigsaw (2) Day 22 - Match 3 (ltd moves 3 levels/games) Day 23 - Suduko (2) Day 24 - Pixel Art (1) Day 25 - Jigsaw (2) As well as the disappointing graphics I had problems with some of the implementation of the puzzles. -The 2048 game I couldn't believe you can only play that with mouse, no standard keyboard keys - no WASD or arrows. -Jigsaw. I had a few problems. I tried the 'add random pieces' button and even when I tried to turn it off, once I went into a puzzle it was still on, so I had pieces of another puzzle in the one I was playing. The 600 piece puzzle could easily have been a bigger jigsaw/picture, there was so much negative space around it and as the pieces were tiny there was plenty of space to have it zoomed in. Even at 2x it was ridiculous, if only you could have zoomed way more and trying to pick up the pieces most of the time my mouse couldn't do it when it was zoomed out. Which you had to have to get some pieces as you couldn't click/drag move the area to find pieces. There was a hint button to place a piece in it at the top, but trying it, it didn't do anything. There was also a magnifying glass where placing a piece allowed it to be zoomed in 2 but only in that area. They did have one good button which was to just show edge pieces which I thought was a good addition. [H1]100%[/H1] More a FYI some of these are hard, and one I'm not sure I will ever get. The jigsaw in under a minute. The suduko timed one, I don't think will be hard, solve it take a screenshot, email it then do it. The multiplayer achievements aren't multiplayer, if you click on the multiplayer button beside some puzzles (jigsaw, pixel art) there is an icon in puzzle I guess for someone else playing with you to click and they could do some. But it wasn't splitscreen and I just ignored it and got the jigsaw one playing myself. N.B There are 2 date based achievements. SUMMARY After the fun free advent calendar in Pixel puzzle Ultimate and other good Christmas games, I was expecting a lot more, especially visually as this kind of game needs good graphics. I love the idea and concept of the game, the follow through implementation of it was sloppy, and at both the 70% sale and full price, price point there is no excuse for this standard. [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/40751408/]Ginger’s Games Curator page[/url]