Tag Archives: games

Storytelling and Puzzles Unite in Wordventures! Available now!

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There’s nothing more exciting than announcing a brand-new puzzle app we’ve been working on, and today, we’ve got something truly special for you to enjoy.

Our newest app, Wordventures: The Vampire Pirate is now available for download!

A town’s children have gone missing. A mysterious undead pirate and his ragtag crew lurk nearby. And the only person who can unravel the mystery and find the children is you!

In Wordventures, you can immerse yourself in a investigation while solving word search puzzles to uncover clues, reveal secrets, and move the story forward!

Combining the world-class puzzle solving you expect from PuzzleNation with a multilayered storytelling experience offers the best of both worlds. You’ll explore the town, meet fascinating characters, and even keep notes in a journal as you play through the story!

You control the pace, you control the difficulty, and you push the narrative forward with every puzzle you solve!

Solve a mystery like never before with Wordventures: The Vampire Pirate! Click here to learn more about the app and download it now!

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PuzzleNation Product Review: Zendo Expansion

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[Note: I received a free copy of this game in exchange for a fair, unbiased review. Due diligence, full disclosure, and all that. And this concludes the disclaimer.]

Expansion sets have become an integral part of the gaming experience. Whether they offer new wrinkles to an established game, allow you to add additional players, or create new ways to use the same game pieces, they revitalize games that might’ve become less fun or interesting after lots of play.

It’s difficult to strike a balance with expansion sets, since they must respect the game that came before and add to it in a meaningful way, but without introducing any game-breaking mechanics or otherwise compromising what made the original game fun in the first place.

The designers at Looney Labs are absolute pros when it comes to balancing their expansion packs. Each one enhances the gameplay without sacrificing any of the original game’s clarity or cohesiveness.

In the past, we’ve looked at Looney Labs expansions like Fluxx Dice (which add further mayhem to an already chaotic game of Fluxx), the Just Coffee and Better with Bacon expansions for Just Desserts (which add new dishes and characters to deepen gameplay options), and the Bridge Expansion for Star Trek Fluxx and Star Trek: The Next Generation Fluxx (which allow you to combine both games into one).

Today, we’re looking at an expansion pack for one of the company’s most immersive and challenging puzzle games: Zendo.

In Zendo, the players pull pieces from a communal pile in order to build different structures, using pyramids, wedges, and blocks. One player, the moderator, chooses a secret rule for the players to uncover, and builds two structures. One of these structures follows the secret rule, and one does not, and both are marked as such.

Secret rules can be as simple as “must contain all three shapes” or “must contain exactly four pieces.” They can be as complex as “must contain more blue pieces than blocks” or “must contain at least one yellow piece pointing at a blue piece.” Some rules involve how pieces touch, or how they’re stacked, while others demand no touching or stacking whatsoever. The field is wide open at the start of the game.

Players then try to deduce the secret rule by building structures themselves, arranging pieces from the communal pile into various patterns and asking the moderator for more information.

So, how does the Zendo Expansion affect the original?

[The gray areas of the card are variable options to choose from, meaning each card offers several different possible rules depending on the moderator’s choices.]

The Zendo Expansion is a ten-card deck of new secret rule cards that allow the moderator to create more complex and challenging structures for the other players to unravel.

But these ten cards offer much more than just the rules themselves. They encourage both the moderator and the players to be more creative, considering not just the shapes and how they interact, but the overall look of the structure.

One of the cards requires players to shape the structure’s shadow into a given shape. Moving beyond the pieces themselves and incorporating the light and shadow of the play area is a clever and unexpected way to use the Zendo pieces.

It immediately sends your brain in new directions, both as a player trying to deduce other secret rules in later game sessions and as a moderator looking for new ways to prove or disprove players’ theories with your own builds.

Not only does the Expansion deck add all sorts of new twists on the original game, but it makes you want to be more ambitious and clever in your guesses and structures the more you play.

With new rule cards ranging from easy to difficult, players of all skill levels will benefit from adding this set of cards to their puzzle game arsenal.

Zendo and the Zendo Expansion are available from Looney Labs, and both are featured in this year’s Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!

A Rubik’s Cube is Brought to Life in this Short Film!

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In the world of puzzles, there are certain images that are unmistakable, no matter what language you speak. A few concepts that are universally familiar and instantly recognizable.

A Scrabble tile. The black and white pattern of a crossword grid.

A small, multicolored cube.

The Rubik’s Cube is iconic, and it feels like part of the fabric of puzzles at this point. We’ve seen people set new records in speed-solving them, computers designed to solve them, and foods crafted to look like them. There have been Rubik’s Cube Halloween costumes, marriage proposals, and art installations. People are even designing and 3-D printing their own Rubik’s-inspired creations.

But no one has ever brought the Rubik’s Cube to life quite like Bastiaan Schravendeel and the team at Polder Animation.

In the short animated film Scrambled, we’re introduced to two unforgettable characters on a train platform: a girl named Esra and a nameless Rubik’s cube.

When Esra misses her train and busies herself with her phone while waiting for the next one, the perceptive little Rubik’s Cube makes its presence known.

This short is reminiscent of a Miyazaki film — a world with hidden surprises — as well as the charming interactions of Pixar films like Wall-E, and it will no doubt be the best six minutes of your day:

I could talk about all the messages and subtext underpinning this wonderful little story: analog play vs. digital, the value of feeling a well-earned sense of accomplishment, the magic of puzzles. You no doubt detected the same themes while you watched the short.

But instead, I’d rather give a shout-out to the wonderful animators who brought this world to life. Esra is instantly relatable, shutting out the world for a bit while waiting for her train, and the hilarious, puppy-like antics of the Rubik’s Cube are immensely engaging. You can’t help but root for the little guy, even if solving him seems to bring an end to his interactions with Esra.

It’s amazing how quickly you forge a bond with the Rubik’s Cube, and the animators deserve high praise for making a puzzle that inspires wonder and frustration in equal measure into one so endearing.

In an interview with Short of the Week, Schravendeel said:

The biggest challenge was to create a genuinely believable, likable and relatable character from a Rubik’s cube without making it about anything other than it being a Rubik’s cube. I’ve always liked films that manage to evoke emotion and personality from objects that usually don’t have any, especially if it can be done without dialogue.

Dialogue would have ruined the simplicity and wonder of Esra and the Cube’s interactions, and the mix of wordless communication and physical comedy made for a wonderful viewing experience.

Scrambled is a delight. I hope you enjoy.

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You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!

PuzzleNation Product Review: Mary Engelbreit Loonacy

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[Note: I received a free copy of this game in exchange for a fair, unbiased review. Due diligence, full disclosure, and all that. And this concludes the disclaimer.]

If you’re looking for frenetic, quick-play card games, they don’t come much quicker or more chaotic than Loonacy.

In Loonacy, players compete to dump all of the cards in their hand by dropping them one-at-a-time into various piles. They do so by matching one of two symbols on their card with the symbol atop the discard piles. For instance, if you’ve got a card with an owl and a queen on it, you can drop that card onto a pile with an owl on top or a queen on top.

But since every player in the game is doing the same thing at the same time — there’s no taking turns here — it’s a race to drop a matching card from your hand before any of the other players can drop a card from theirs.

Looney Labs has published two previous editions of the game — Loonacy and Retro Loonacy — but neither is as eye-catching, as lovely, as charming, or as unexpected as the latest edition, Mary Engelbreit Loonacy.

Unlike the cartoony character-centric images of the original or the nostalgia-fueled artsy icons of the retro version, Mary Engelbreit Loonacy brings a peaceful, almost folksy sense of style and humor to the game.

The imagery is gorgeous and heartwarming, depicting uplifting images that would fit in with any kitchen or living room. Words of wisdom like “She who laughs, lasts” and “Sooner or later, we all quote our mothers” mix with scenes of familial bliss, childhood innocence, or simple pleasures.

In a game that’s all about observation, decision making, instantaneous pattern matching, and rapid reflexes, juxtaposing that sort of anxiety-inducing gameplay with these peaceful, fun images is a stroke of genius, one that forces you to pause, even for just a moment, in order to simply enjoy Engelbreit’s delightful art.

Mary Engelbreit Loonacy bridges the gap between the kid-oriented silly imagery of the original and the adult-oriented artsy feel of the sequel, making the best of both in one family-friendly package.

Mary Engelbreit Loonacy is available from Looney Labs and other participating retailers.

It’s also featured in our Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide, alongside all sorts of terrific puzzly gift ideas, including other Looney Labs products like Zendo, Get the MacGuffin, Star Trek Fluxx, and more!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!

A World of Puzzle Luxury

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As recreational pastimes go, puzzles are pretty affordable.

A New York Times crossword subscription runs you $40 for the year. Many top constructors — like those featured in our Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide — offer outstanding puzzles on a weekly basis for less than that.

Puzzle magazines like those from our friends at Penny Dell Puzzles run $5 to $10 (even for the big ones!) and puzzle collections by constructors and puzzle outlets rarely crack double digits.

(Heck, our apps are free downloads!)

So you can imagine my surprise when I saw some constructors on Twitter discussing a subscription service called Puzzlelux that costs nine hundred dollars a year!

[In this actual photo from the website, a woman from a 1990s Calvin Klein TV ad appears to be mildly inconvenienced by an elegant puzzlenado that has swept her into the air, risking all sorts of luxurious papercuts.]

Yes, Puzzlelux offers seasonal bundles of puzzles — Sudoku, crosswords, Cryptograms, and word scrambles — for $75 a month.

Now, not having solved any of their puzzles, I cannot fairly judge whether they’re worth that kind of cash splashing. But I am skeptical, given that I can get awesome puzzles elsewhere for 1/30th that price.

I mean, $899 dollars is pretty steep. A trip on Cunard’s crossword cruise last year was cheaper than that!

Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised that someone came along to corner the market on high-end puzzlesmithing, since in the past, I have encountered a few examples of puzzle luxury items in my travels.

Every year in the Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide, I jokingly mention that the folks at Hammacher Schlemmer offer a $12,000 Scrabble game in their catalog.

Yes, The World’s Largest Scrabble Game takes up an entire wall of your home, but the odds are slimmer that you’ll ever misplace one of the game tiles in your couch cushions.

Then again, $12,000 looks reasonable next to $100,000, which was the price tag for a specialty version of Monopoly produced for FAO Schwarz.

With a solid gold board, emeralds and sapphires embedded in the board (as well as in hotels and houses), and real U.S. currency in place of the play money, this might be the peak of puzzle-game excess.

Unless, of course, you commission your own labyrinth, or want to solve Sudoku in space, or something like that. But who knows what the future holds for super-wealthy puzzlers out there?

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!

PuzzleNation Product Review: Girl Genius: The Works

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[Note: I received a free copy of this game in exchange for a fair, unbiased review. Due diligence, full disclosure, and all that. And this concludes the disclaimer.]

Some games are famous for their many moving parts. Mousetrap and The Grape Escape both come to mind, since players move around — or through — a machine in order to complete the game.

But what if every character in a game was a cog in a vast machine? Imagine heroes and villains making their moves as the plot whirls around them, constantly altered by their choices, until someone emerges as the victor.

Girl Genius: The Works places two or more players inside the guts of that machine, and leaves them to figure out how to make the machine work for them.

It’s a card game that mixes simple moves — flipping, spinning, removing, and replacing cards — with deep strategic gameplay, since any card could start a chain reaction that hands you or your opponent points.

The basic idea centers around a board made up of 12 facedown cards. Each player takes turns trying to score points by “popping” cards and adding them to their score pile.

To do so, the player flips over a card on the board, revealing the character, the pattern of symbols along each edge, the card’s score value, and what happens when the card is popped.

The player must then spin a faceup card 180 degrees, with the goal of matching the symbols along one side of the card with the symbols on a neighboring card in the machine.

If the symbols match up, that spun card is popped, meaning you pick it up, and follow the instructions on the card. These instructions can range from drawing cards or popping additional cards to stealing cards from other players, rearranging the game board, or even new rules that allow you to win the game immediately.

[In our case, the card instructed us to turn all hero cards facedown.]

Once you’ve added that card to your score pile, you replace it with a card from your hand, rebuilding the machine. (Each player gets five cards in their hand to start.) Play then passes to the next player.

The wow factor of Girl Genius: The Works comes in those moments when you pop cards. The right combination of symbols can have you popping multiple cards at once, and once you start reading the instructions on those popped cards, the game can swing wildly into one player’s favor or another.

The characters on each cards, based on the long-running Girl Genius webcomic, are vivid and entertaining, and the attention to detail on the art extends to the back of the cards, where the interlocking gears depicted give you the image of a complicated, multilayered machine you’re manipulating to your own ends.

Plus, the board is different every time you play, adding a lot of replayability to a single deck. And remember, there are four decks to mix and match as you see fit, based on different storylines in the Girl Genius universe: Castle Wulfenbach, Master Payne’s Circus of Adventure, Castle Heterodyne, and The Siege of Mechanicsburg.

That means you can play with practically endless combinations and permutations. Heroes and villains will collide in ways you never expected, based on simple actions like spinning cards.

The strategy element is almost stealthy, because players get into the game too quickly to be intimidated by the sheer number of possible choices the cards allow. There’s no chance for new players, or younger players, to be overwhelmed, because they’ll be too busy enjoying flipping, spinning, and popping cards, and watching the machine spring into action.

Girl Genius: The Works is terrific fun, a marvelous gateway into strategy card games, deck-building games, and more complex board games in general.

Girl Genius: The Works is available from Cheapass Games.

Be sure to check out all four decks to get the full Girl Genius card game experience, and visit our Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide for more puzzly gift ideas, including other Cheapass Games products like Button Men and The Island of Doctor Lucky!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!