Numba Deluxe Reviews

Numba Deluxe is a casual puzzle game in which you highlight groups of number by type (eg. 1 1 1 1), order (1 2 3 4), addition (1 3 5 7) or multiplication (1 2 4 8), causing them to disappear and numbers from above to fall. There are three modes: Classic, Timeless, and Puzzle. I bought this for the puzzle mode, in which I've spent about 95% of my playing time, so that's what I'm reviewing. This is very much a game of what you see is what you get: watch the video on the store page and you'll know whether this is your type of game or not. That might be kind of lazy of me to say in a review, but it's true ;) Visuals are clean but unspectacular, music is cheery but non-descript--there are no bells and whistles here. The same background is used throughout all the menus/games, the same sound effect is used every.single.time. you clear blocks (and you will hear it a LOT). That said, is the gameplay itself solid? I would say so. The puzzles, in which you must clear all the blocks from the level, are generally on the easy side so far (I'm at level 60-something out of 84, in about 1.5 hours), but once in a while there's some curveballs thrown your way via different block types to keep it varied. (eg. a fire block needs to fall on an ice block to melt it). However, so far it's a good thing that levels are easy, because the puzzles appear sequentially, and there's no way to skip to a different puzzle without solving the one you're on. The scoring system seems rather pointless as well, as every time you restart the game you begin at 0, and there's no score recorded for individual puzzles, so the highscore table is really just a matter of how long you played rather than how well/fast you solved the puzzles (there's also no timer, btw). On a technical note, there are no resolution options. I realize I'm sounding rather negative, but that's only because I'm mentioning things that are small annoyances. The positives are all in the video: it's a simple, straightforward game that can be easily picked up and sometimes makes you put on your thinking cap. I have no regrets about my $3.