Tag Archives: games

PuzzleNation App Review: Puppy Sanctuary

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Welcome to our fourth edition of PuzzleNation App Reviews! Today we continue our quest to explore the world of puzzly games and apps for your tablet or smartphone!

Our resident App player and puzzle fiend Sherri has another intriguing game for us today, so without further ado, let’s dive into her review of Puppy Sanctuary for the iPad and iPhone!

If you enjoy cute and adorable puppies, then Puppy Sanctuary is the game for you. It is a match-3 iOS game (in the vein of Candy Crush) that is much more than a simple match-3 game.

Puppy Island has been invaded! Your mission, should you accept it, is to rescue the trapped puppies and keep them safe and happy in your sanctuary. This is an incredible game, seeming so simple yet surprisingly complex. It starts off as a match-3 game and morphs into something much more interactive.

You can play the game in a relaxed or timed mode. To rescue the puppies, you have to remove all of the red tiles from the game board by making matches of 3 or more tiles.

You can swap tiles in any direction, and you create power-ups when you make matches of 4 or more. The longer the match, the stronger the power-up. In these levels, your matches fill an energy meter that, once full, you use to blast a large chunk of tiles. Once the red tiles are gone, the puppy is rescued and placed in your sanctuary.

There is more to do in this game than just rescuing puppies. You have gem levels where you earn gems to spend in the sanctuary store and you earn special gifts. In these levels, you match the gems in groups of 3 or more in order to drop the gifts to the bottom of the board.

This game also has hidden object levels, where you earn food, water, and other stores for your puppies. You can also find hidden gems in these levels. Yet another level type is the bubble shooter. In these levels, you must stop an alien from creating a puppy trap. If you have a ball you can’t use, you can shoot the alien!

The levels get progressively more complex as you progress in the game, so the game boards don’t get stale. Also, once you have saved puppies, your saved puppies keep the trapped puppy company at the bottom of the board. You can even interact with the pups, and they will do tricks!

All that makes for a great game and I haven’t even gotten to the sanctuary part of the yet!

Once you have saved some puppies, they get placed in a sanctuary where it’s your goal to keep them happy. With the gems you accumulate, you can buy toys and decorations for them. The decorations get placed in the sanctuary, and you use the toys to interact with the pups. Tapping on each puppy will bring up its profile and heart meter. A full heart meter makes for a very happy puppy.

There is just so much to do in this game that I cannot see how one can get bored playing. The game map is awesome. Each variety of level has an icon, so you can see what level is coming, and each level provides a preview. There is just so much more to see and do with this game. I just cannot recommend this game more.

Ratings for Puppy Sanctuary:

  • Enjoyability: 5/5 — I loved this game. The puppies are absolutely adorable, and there are a good variety of game types.
  • How well puzzles are incorporated: 4/5 — With the variety of game styles and challenges, this is much more than a match-3 game.
  • Graphics: 4/5 — The puppies are distinctive and have their own personalities, and the game boards are eye-catching and interactive.
  • Gameplay: 5/5 — There is so much to do in this game and one shouldn’t get bored.

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

Puzzles from the Last Frontier

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No matter where you go, you’re bound to find some form of puzzle, whether it’s a riddle, a mechanical puzzle, a pen-and-paper puzzle, or a strategy game. For me, that’s one of the most interesting aspects of puzzle culture: the curious wrinkles and variations on puzzles that a particular place or national identity inspires.

While on vacation in Alaska last week, I found a few examples of puzzles with a wonderful Alaskan twist, and I thought I’d share them with the PuzzleNation audience.

One of the first things I noticed is that many Alaskan museums and wildlife centers employ puzzles to teach visitors about Alaska’s diverse ecosystem.

The Alaska Sealife Center was a particular favorite of mine. Located in Seward (only a few hours from Anchorage by train or car), the Sealife Center not only incorporated games to explain different fishing techniques (and the dangers of overfishing), but the gift shop was a treasure trove of puzzle books with a decidedly educational bent.

Clueless in Alaska caught my eye with its mix of visual and classic pen-and-paper puzzles, all geared toward instilling greater understanding of the animals Alaska is famous for.

Of course, I encountered crosswords and Sudoku puzzles in the local paper, but I was on the lookout for something with a bit more local flair.

And wouldn’t you know it, I discovered the perfect souvenir at the local Fred Meyer:

An Alaska-themed Rubik’s Cube, featuring both a unique color scheme and silhouettes of bears, caribou, eagles, moose, and wolves. With the 40th anniversary of the Rubik’s Cube this year, how could I not pick this up?

But classic board game fans, don’t feel left out! Turns out, the most famous board game of all time also has its own Alaskan variant:

Alaska-Opoly! It might be hard to pronounce, but it’s overflowing with local color and style.

As a puzzle fan, spotting these little beauties made me feel right at home, even four thousand miles away.

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

It’s Follow-Up Friday: Light and Sheep edition!

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Welcome to Follow-Up Friday!

For those new to PuzzleNation Blog, Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and update the PuzzleNation audience on how these projects are doing and what these people have been up to in the meantime.

And today, I thought I’d take a look back on classic video games that have found their way into the real world in curious ways.

Last week, we celebrated the 30th anniversary of the puzzly video game beloved by so many, Tetris. And it was only after I posted our celebratory blog post that I realized I’d left out my favorite Tetris-themed video.

And Follow-Up Friday seems like the perfect opportunity to share it with my fellow puzzlers. So please, enjoy this video of skateboarders playing their own curious variation of Tetris while skating downhill:

Oh! That reminds me of another video-game-to-real-life translation I saw on the Internet a while back.

Did you know you can play video games with sheep? Oh yes! After some masterful choreography work, check out the work of these ingenious farmers:

And finally, I’m happy to present one of my all-time favorite Internet videos. It’s a stop-motion version of Space Invaders, played with real people in a movie theater. Need I say more?

These are not only incredibly intricate and well-executed bits of public theater; they’re a testament to what a puzzly mind can create with the time, the inclination, and a willingness to look a little bit silly. Sounds like a perfect combination to me.

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

United we solve…

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[President Bill Clinton and Brit Hume team up to tackle one of Merl Reagle‘s crosswords.]

A while back, I wrote a post about some of the many puzzle competitions and tournaments that are hosted around the world. But ever since then, I’ve been pondering how odd it is that puzzle competition is so prevalent when puzzles themselves have always been a collaborative effort.

Think about it. Jigsaw puzzles can be solved alone, but aren’t your memories of previous jigsaw puzzles always the ones you solved with others? When you get stuck on a crossword, what’s the first thing you do? You ask someone nearby. I know plenty of couples that solve crosswords and other puzzles together.

[How great is this stock photo I found? It makes me laugh every time I look at it.]

Paradoxically, most group puzzle games are competitive, like Boggle or Bananagrams. Even the games where you build something together, like Words with Friends, Scrabble, Jenga, or Castellan, are all competitive games.

Board games follow the same pattern. The vast majority of them pit players against each other, encouraging adversarial gameplay that leaves a single winner.

[Let the Wookiee win…]

But thankfully, there is a small (but growing!) number of board games that have the same cooperative spirit that pen-and-paper puzzles often do. These cooperative games encourage the players to strategize together and help each other to accomplish tasks and achieve victory as a team. Essentially, instead of playing against each other, they’re playing against the game.

Whether you’re defending your castle from monsters (Justin De Witt’s Castle Panic) or trying to stop a monstrous evil from conquering the world (Arkham Horror), you succeed or fail as a team. It’s a wonderful gameplay experience either way.

One of the top names in cooperative board games is Matt Leacock, creator of Pandemic and Forbidden Island. His games are exceedingly challenging but an immensely good time, even if you fail to stop the viruses or the island sinks before you can gather up all the treasures. It just makes you more determined to play better next time. (This is a wonderful counterpoint to the disillusionment that can crop up when one player trounces another in standard board games.)

There are some cooperative games, like Shadows Over Camelot or Betrayal At House On The Hill that have it both ways, serving as a team game until one player betrays the others, and then it becomes a team vs. spoiler game.

While competitive gameplay certainly does have its advantages, sometimes it’s nice to take some time out and win or lose as a team.

What do you think, PuzzleNationers? Do you prefer games with a winner, or do you enjoy cooperative games? Are there any great cooperative games or puzzles I missed? Let me know!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

PuzzleNation Product Review: Schmovie

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Galactic Sneeze is a relative newcomer to the puzzle/board game scene — they describe themselves as a “fun stuff think tank,” rather than a company — but if their game Schmovie is any example, they definitely live up to that name.

Schmovie is the brainchild of Galactic Sneeze co-founders Bryan Wilson and Sara Farber. (Check out Sara’s session of 5 Questions here!) Schmovie challenges players to conjure up the funniest movie title for a given scenario, based on a roll of the die (to determine the genre of the film) and a card from each of two decks, the “who” deck and the “what” deck.

[So, in this case, we need a drama about a hypersensitive granny.
Can you come up with a better title than “Irritable Mrs. Howell Syndrome”?
My friend suggests “The Slow and the Furious.”]

Each round, one player is the Schmovie Producer. This person rolls the die and flips over the Who and What cards. Every other player writes down their movie titles on their erasable boards, and then turns them in to the Schmovie Producer face down. The Producer shuffles the boards to keep the players anonymous, then reads each title aloud. The Producer then chooses a favorite, and that player earns a Schquid Trophy.

The first player (or team) to earn 5 Schquids wins the game.

This is a terrific game for puzzlers, because creativity and wordplay are such a key component. (Considering how many crossword puzzle clues are puns or plays on words, a facility with groaners is something most puzzlers already have in their skill sets.)

You can write anything as your film title, whether it’s your own creation or a pun based on an established film — whatever gets a bigger laugh or best shows off your cleverness.

And you can even try out Schmovie from the comfort of your own phone or computer. There are frequent rounds of Schmovie played on Twitter and Facebook by the game’s creators, complete with electronic Schquid trophies!

With plenty of replayability and enough cards to keep your wordplay muscles in fighting trim for a long time to come, Schmovie is punderful fun for all.

[Glenn’s note: For anyone who has noticed the similarity between Schmovie’s play mechanic and the @midnight television show’s game #HashtagWars, it seems to be a happy accident that both emerged on the pop culture scene in late 2013. @midnight debuted in October, weeks after Schmovie started hitting stores.]

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

It’s Follow-Up Friday: Tetris edition!

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Welcome to Follow-Up Friday!

For those new to PuzzleNation Blog, Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and update the PuzzleNation audience on how these projects are doing and what these people have been up to in the meantime.

And today, we’re celebrating the 30th anniversary of Tetris! (Following up our post last year about the 29th anniversary of Tetris, of course.)

[Feel free to leave this a capella version of Tetris’s Theme A music by musician Smooth McGroove running in the background to properly set the mood.]

If crosswords are the top pen-and-paper puzzle and the Rubik’s cube is the top puzzle toy, then Tetris has to be the top puzzle game of all-time. It is instantly recognizable and completely unforgettable. (I still get a little anxious whenever I think about the music speeding up when I got too close to the top of the screen.)

It’s available for every video game console, computer, and media device, and has been for decades. Alexey Pajitnov’s incredibly addictive puzzle game baby has conquered the world, and today, we are proudly to join in the global celebration with a few of our favorite Tetris themed pictures.

We previously featured a Tetris Halloween costume in our puzzly costumes post, but these kids upped the ante with four Tetramino pieces as a team costume!

Someone even managed to render the blocks in origami form! How cool is that?

And then there’s this enterprising chef, who whipped up a Tetris-themed bento box full of blocky veggies to enjoy!

We’ve collected more Tetris images on a special board on our Pinterest page, so feel free to check them out in honor of today!

And to Alexey Pajitnov, thank you for years of puzzle pleasure. Your game has crossed borders and won the hearts of millions. You changed the puzzle landscape forever, and for the better.

In closing, here’s another famous Tetris tune performed a capella style for your enjoyment:

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!