QuickLook.Technobrains

I can’t quite figure this game out.  It’s part Tetris, part match 3, but really doesn’t capture the best parts of either.  There are no power ups, it’s nearly impossible to clean up the board once you’ve gotten a few extraneous pieces out of place, and there’s nothing new about the game play at all.  On the plus side, though, the music is pretty good.  Too bad I couldn’t listen to the sound track while playing something else…

Starting To Get Full

Pieces come onto the playing board much like Tetris where they fall from the top of the screen and head towards the bottom.  Also like Tetris, each piece is comprised of multiple small blocks.  The most blocks used in a TriColor piece are 3, however, so you’ll get a single block, a set of two blocks, or a set of three that’s either in a straight line or that looks like a corner.  Your job is to position these pieces so that blocks of the same color line up horizontally, vertically or diagonally in groups of at least 3.  Once you’ve gotten a group together the group will disappear.  Depending on something, pieces that were attached to or on top of the ones that disappeared will fall.  What this depends on I really don’t know.  This is the biggest problem I have with TriColor.  Whether or not the pieces fall should be consistent (my vote is that they always fall).  On top of that, blocks that do fall will often stop short of coming in contact with another block.  I’m not sure what determines how far a block falls, either.

The goal is to keep going until unmatched blocks have reached the top of the screen.  That’s really all there is to it.  There are no sub-goals, no power ups, nothing to make the game stand out in any way.  To control the game you use the arrows at the bottom of the screen to move left or right.  Tapping on a piece will rotate it counter-clockwise.  There is no way to rotate a piece clockwise.  Clicking the down arrow will immediately send a piece as far as it can go towards the bottom of the screen.  It would have been really nice if the down arrow would have made the piece descend faster but not automatically move to the bottom of the screen.  Also, since I already have my hands to the sides of the screen in order to use the buttons, I would rather the pause button be the rotate button and make me click the game play area to pause.

The game looks decent, but it’s nothing special.  The main special effect is the lightening that encompasses a group of blocks before they disappear.  The sound effects are a bit odd.  Pieces coming together sound like cubes of ice rubbing, and the end result of the lightening destroying blocks sounds like a glass ornament popping and shattering.  As I mentioned at the beginning I do like the music, but even that can get kind of old since it’s the same song playing repeatedly.

Mobirate, the developer behind TriColor, has put out some other fun iPhone games including Brain Fit and Stick-Fu, so I guess I expected a bit more from this one.  Maybe they’ll revisit the game in the future and beef it up some, but until then I’d suggest getting Tetris, Columns, or one of the many match 3 games that exist on the App Store as an alternative to this.  Of course at 99 cents, you’re not out much if you don’t trust me.

Final Verdict: Not Recommended
App Store Link

[All About Quick Looks]

Enigma is a perfect name for this game.  Not because it’s challenging or because it makes you think.  The real riddle is why anyone would want to play it.  Lack of instructions, visual blandness and no audio at all are just some of the issues Enigma contends with.  It may sound like I’m being pretty harsh here, but now I’ll back up my sentiments.

You launch the game and you’re taken right to the game board.  No splash screen or anything.  If you recognize the layout of the board and / or are familiar with the inspiration, you’ll realize this is a Mastermind clone.  If you’re not familiar with Mastermind and you haven’t really read the App Store description then good luck, because there are no in-game instructions.  Just in case you’re wondering, I’ll give you a brief rundown of how the game is played.  You have somewhere between four to six slots to fill, depending on the level you choose.  You also have a certain number of guesses, depending on which level you’ve chosen.  The higher the level, the more guess you get.  So what are you guessing?  What goes in the slots, of course.

Discover The Sequence

To the left of the game board are somewhere between 6 and 8 pegs, again depending on skill level chosen.  To fill the slots you click on a slot in the first available row, then click on one of the pegs to the left.  Up until you “check” the correctness of a given row you can change the combination of pegs as much as you want.  Once you check your answer, which is accomplished by clicking the icon of two pegs in the menu panel (a check would have made much more sense), the game will tell you how many you got right, and then go to the next row.  This is one part that confuses me.  There is a second set of slots on the right side of the screen, and they will be filled with white, grey or no pegs when you check your answer.  The white are for “right” answers, but I can’t determine if it means the pegs are in the correct position or if you just have two pegs of the right color in the row, or what’s going on.  This is where instructions would come in really handy.

Basically, you keep guessing sequences of pegs until you either get the sequence right or you run out of rows to fill in.  Or, like in my case, you just quit the game.  Without knowing what exactly the indicators on the right hand board mean, it’s really difficult to know how to win the game.  The App Store claims that this is 6 games in one, but what that really means is that there are six difficulty levels which change the size of the board and number of peg colors to choose from, as well as whether you want to allow duplicates in the sequence or not.  Personally, calling that “six games in one” is a bit misleading as far as I’m concerned.

Now if the game’s presentation was good, I might be willing to muddle through and try to determine what the “correctness” indicators mean.  Unfortunately, it’s not.  Beyond the fact that there is no help, the menu system is ridiculous.  The icons don’t do a great job of representing their tasks, and because of the small space allotted for things you actually have to click a button to get the second half of the menu.  The sad part is all the second menu does is let you change the look of the game, so why couldn’t that be in the options screen?  The game itself is nothing special to look at.  The backgrounds are fine except that they are mostly covered by the board anyway.  Some of the tile sets for the pegs are nifty, but nothing really wowed me.  You can also change the color of the board for what that’s worth, but personally I felt the overall look of the game was a bit amateurish.  There are no sound effects or music.  You can play your own music, which I actually decided to take advantage of for once, but if you don’t pick enough songs the music will just stop in the middle of the game.  Guess they don’t believe in looping playback.

I’m trying to think of a single reason I can recommend this game, but nothing comes to mind.  If you’ve never played Mastermind before, you can probably find a free clone on the internet.  If not, maybe check for one in the App Store itself.  If you’re really desparate to play, try tracking down the original board game on eBay.  Whichever route you go, it will probably be better than Enigma.

Final Verdict: Not Recommended
App Store Link
App Shopper Link

[Note: image courtesy of App Shopper]