Computer puzzle games have been around for a long while – well as far as I can remember. My earliest knowledge is called ‘European Scene Jigsaw Puzzles Vol. 1’ by Thorn EMI UK way back in 1981. A nice game with crisp graphics amid the moderate choice of colours, it served its purpose. Fast forward to April 2014, another puzzle game caught my attention which happens to be in the form of this review – Pixel Puzzles: Japan. What attracted me to this game is the theme (Japan) that plays upon the ‘traditional’ puzzle gameplay. Well, once I have knocked out all the puzzles, this puzzle game leaves a lot to be desired.
So let’s start off with the good points first. This puzzle game certainly does have a traditional Japanese feel with the puzzle borders filled with water and floating Lilly pads – that is the Koi Pond. Also there’s a carp swimming about where you can actually can catch it. Place the carp on the puzzle board and he’ll fishtail back (excuse the pun) to the pond. There are other things you can do to the carp however I let you discover it (and no, you cannot eat it).
There are nineteen puzzles to choose from and the pieces range from sixty to the granddaddy three hundred and fifty. I guess the puzzle purists won’t considering three hundred and fifty large however, in this game, it’s the largest. The puzzle pieces are not your ‘traditional’ piece as most have weird shapes to them. In addition to this, you cannot refer to the puzzle picture at all as there’s an additional ‘feature’ where you need to unlock - the ‘Power of the I-Ching’.
The way this works is that there’s a golden ‘Yin Yang’ piece randomly placed in the puzzle. Once you place the piece on the random placement, you unlock one part of the I-Ching. Do this eight times you can use its power. The power is the reveal the actual picture for a short moment or two and that’s about it. Talking about a buzz killer aye. I guess the developers needs something ‘authentic’ to enhance this game.
And now here comes the unpleasant parts. First thing is this I-Ching concept – personally it’s just a waste of feature as the puzzles are all quite easy to do. Granted some are a little difficult however for me, the I-Ching is just a gimmick that can do without. Secondly, you can go crazily clicking on every part of the canvas until the piece slots in as there’s no penalty to do so. Also, because the game forces the pieces to slot in nicely, it takes away the fun of building ‘mini canvases’ all over the board.
Third, you cannot rotate the pieces so every piece is the right way up so it’s making this easy puzzle game even easier to play. Fourth, there’s no save feature so you cannot park the puzzle to take a little rest and fifth, there’s a bug where, when you try to grab a puzzle piece from the pond, there’s a good chance that you will select another piece close to it instead of the one you have chosen. I think the reason behind this is the puzzle’s algorithm. It’s designed that, if there’s a couple of pieces bunched up together, the algorithm selects the piece that represents the north western corner of the picture first and finally, south eastern corner last.
Yet there’s two more that really grips me the most. The first being the quality of all the pictures. I presume they are the developer’s photos however, all the pictures are extremely low quality. This is an absolute no-no as, being a puzzle game, its primary objective is to provide the user high quality pictures. The second is the abysmal sounds – the background music is nothing more than a short musical scores that loops over and over again. Also the sound quality, just like the photos are abysmal – very low quality; so low you can even hear the hissing sound. At least they could have bought a decent microphone or maybe remove the hissing sound from the original recording.
Other than completing the puzzles, there’s an extra feature where you can view the gallery and see who made this game (without the dart board). There’s also two additional puzzles to complete at any time as, I believe are the free DLC for this game – another words, you don’t have to unlock them. So being a ‘traditional’ puzzle game is nothing more than a farce. With so many negatives, it’s a wonder why I completed all the puzzles. Actually the main reason why I did is because of the achievements. If there wasn’t any, this puzzle game will be ditched straight into the bin, figuratively speaking.