Puzzlement is a 2D isometric puzzle game where you play as a red pac-man ghost trying to collect red squares in funky space. The levels are set on the inside or outside walls of cubes with a nice white grid to delineate empty spaces and black portions as solid platforms and barriers. The gimmick is learning to navigate a 2D space that's folded into 3D shapes. Going from one face to another and another and back again can change which direction is down. To complicate things there are also blue squares that reverse gravity and red rimmed blocks that let you rotate the whole level or portions of it.

If you are having a hard time visualizing this then you've got the right idea because I've played this game from start to finish and I have a hard time visualizing it. I think maybe it can be modeled as a 2D plane with more than four cardinal directions ... or less ... it hurts my brain, okay. I shouldn't need to trace my finger across the screen to figure out if what I'm planning even makes sense but I did. A lot. I consistently failed to predict which way down would be on a grid. Several levels have no win conditions but the r key restarts the level with a single stroke.

There are fifty levels that range from banal tutorials to levels that just have you staring at the screen for five minutes to no gain. The whole game is super spare and minimalist, graphically, musically, and in game play. Even what would be the title screen is just the level select. I'm choosing to interpret this as an artistic choice rather than laziness. At two dollars on Steam I'd say puzzle gamers will get there money's worth out of it. Steam page here.

IRON NODER THE THIRTEENTH

Puz"zle*ment (?), n.

The state of being puzzled; perplexity.

Miss Mitford.

 

© Webster 1913.

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