Deltatile Reviews

[b]deltatile[/b] is a neat golf-based tile-swapping puzzler. had some teething issues, needed a bit of patching after release, but it's mostly fine now. and it's great that the store page has actual usability info, should be made mandatory. the goal is to putt the ball, but levels have to be rearranged to make that happen because it's an especially lazy individual that only rolls from tile to tile. you can [b]swap tiles within the grid, based on the ball's movement[/b], so after moving it down, then right, almost any tile can be swapped with another one or an empty cell in that L-shape. the tile with the ball and the hole are obvious exceptions, as are identical ones that wouldn't make a difference. movement direction doesn't matter, so tossing the ball twice to the right still lets you swap a tile 2 away in either direction. [b]65 levels total[/b], 50 regular ones in 5 worlds with their own theme (grass, desert, ice, etc.) and mechanics, plus a [b]swap counter for semi-optional stars to access bonus levels[/b]. don't need every star in every world to get to them and completing all 5, perfectly or otherwise, opens the 6th world with 10 more levels. since it's a swap counter, you can move the ball all you want without affecting it, but [b]I think the requirements for the final level pack are too much[/b]. falling off the level doesn't cause problems, the ball just appears again. just as well, because the desert is a windy place and ice is famously slippery and sometimes breaks after stepping on it. there are also conveyor belts and blocking tiles to deactivate temporarily by stepping on numbered tiles, indicating the number of turns before the block resets. great balls of fire created by lava need to be put out within a certain amount of turns (no level reset, just can't move further). [b]controls are rebindable but the tutorial only shows defaults[/b] and you'll need both a mouse and the keyboard to play, even though menus can be navigated either way. by default wasd moves the ball (arrows also work without changing anything), the mouse controls the cursor and left click swaps tiles. [b]unlimited undo[/b], level reset and [b]unlimited puzzle skip[/b] are also in play, use them as you see fit. [b]level select is unnecessarily finicky.[/b] less so after a few patches, but there's a layer of browsing between the worlds, then gotta zoom in to see what you've done there, and even though the arrows are still there, can't use them until you zoom out again (which should be possible with right click too). it's not even zooming as such, there's very little difference and no need for a close-up anyway, so it should go away, just show progression immediately instead of a useless empty screen and broken navigation. colorful minimalist presentation, great music, volume settings, resolutions, windowed mode and an anti-aliasing toggle are accessible also while playing, with a mute toggle, undo, reset and level numbers always on-screen for convenience. [b]great stuff at a reasonable price from a dedicated developer.[/b] getting all perfects will take some doing, but good enough was good enough for me. skipped a few levels and couldn't unlock and solve every bonus stage, so missed out on the final world. nothing happened after finishing the last regular level, which was a bit underwhelming. it works on win7 and really outdated hardware and [b]has a demo[/b] if you wanna try it first, progress carries over to the full version.