Nylige anmeldelser av 100% Hippo

Much like Zenge, Klocki, and Hook, this game feels incredibly polished and satisfying. The goal is to push all the buttons in each level, but there's rules that dictate what moves are valid, rules that you have to figure out for yourself. The game does a great job of allowing you to figure out the puzzles, and introduces enough mechanics that each level feels fresh and is satisfying to complete. The only negative in my mind is that the last level felt a bit out of place, even once I realized the solution. Like those other games, it is short (~1 hour) but a really great experience.

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Hook is a short game in which you must untangle the hooks by removing them in the correct order.The game feels very clean and polished and it helps you figure out the mechanics as they are introduced without any actual directions. It is peaceful and not too hard, and I enjoy returning to it periodically to play through it again, even though I've done so more than half a dozen times already. It provides a terrific experience that I'd highly recommend, especially for the price.

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Linelight is a refreshing puzzle game that uses relatively simple mechanics to make many clever levels. The music is great - upbeat and catchy, and combined with the clean visuals sets a wonderful mood for the game that makes the game very enjoyable to play. The levels are a great difficulty, challenging enough to make them satisfying to solve, yet not difficult to the point you want to quit. Many of the levels can be passed over if desired and you can come back and return to them later. Each world has a set of more difficult challenges that are hidden off the main track to provide further challenge once you've played through the game. Some puzzles rely on timing and movement which is utilized well, but may be offputting for some people. It took me over 9 hours to complete everything, which with the unique gameplay makes it well worth the price.

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TL;DR: The game is short (took me an hour on a trackpad) with uninteresting puzzles and way too many unrelated achievements.

Looking past the achievements for a sec, let me talk about the puzzles. The Numberlink puzzles in this game ultimately boil down to trying to fill all the space on the board rather than trying to connect the nodes, and have numerous possible solutions. I never felt that any level was hard, challenging, or interesting. Most of the puzzles feel very empty, and have only a tiny number of nodes for the board size (for example several puzzles on a 10x10 board have only 8 nodes that need connecting). This leads to puzzles that have dozens if not hundreds of possible solutions, most of which feel extremely trival and obvious. Interestingly the short Wikipedia page on Numberlink puzzles says "It is considered that a problem is well-designed only if it has a unique solution and all the cells in the grid are filled", something that isn't true for any level except maybe the first. The 'intended' solutions to the puzzles quickly become obvious after doing several of the levels and pretty much all consist of unnecessarily long straight lines that needlessly wrap around each other. It feels as if the puzzles are generated based on a valid solution, but most of those base solutions aren't remotely close to how a human would connect the resulting puzzle. This makes intuitive solutions feel unintended with tons of zig-zags in the path just to fill space. An example of the issues mentioned here can be seen in the following level (it was level 25, not one of the intro ones) or by looking at a guide of the game showing level solutions: http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1249749040
The minimalist UI works well for the puzzles, and it probably the best part of the game, but there's just a plethora of other issues that detract from the gameplay (the same issues the free Lines game suffers from). After every level you're returned to the level selection screen rather than moved to the next puzzle, which leads to tons of unneeded loading time. Other than the first couple, the levels don't seem to be ordered according to any pattern, with large puzzles followed by smaller ones, then back again. The UI buttons are abriviated to single letters which obscures their meaning. People shouldn't have to ask in Discussions what the buttons do, the UI should make it clear. When moving the cursor quickly, the game would sometimes not pick up on the motion or briefly display multicolored trianges on the board. This is particularly annoying when the solutions to most levels are very clear from the start. The sound, which I listened to only briefly quickly felt repetitive, but most importantly wasn't relaxing at all, and I found the game much enjoyable when it was entirely muted.

In my mind, the most glaring issue with the game is the pointlessly spammy achievements. The game has nearly 600 achievements with only an hour of gameplay. The first 50 levels award 8 achievements every time you complete a level, which means the unlocks just scroll and scroll nonstop at the beginning of the game. Then levels 51-75 don't award any achievements, and levels 76-100 start giving 8 achievements each again. The achievements don't even relate to the game in any way, most achievements are just random words or phrases. What's the point of achievements if you aren't achieving anything when you get them? It was due to the pointless achievements that I opted to play the game on another account (hence low playtime).

There's just so many things wrong with the execution of these puzzles, I just can't recommend it under any circumstances. If you're willing to look past the issues of the game, still then I don't recommend this game, just play the Lines Free. It is the same exact game except without a pricetag. If you're keen on purchasing a game of this type, I'd recommend Dots Extreme. Same Numberlink concept, significantly improved execution and variety of puzzles.

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Bottom line, it is passable as a puzzle game, but I wouldn't recommend it. Foremost reason is the achievements. I don't feel rewarded when I get 8 achievements everytime I complete a fairly easy level. At the beginning of the game the levels were so easy the achievement unlocks just scrolled and scrolled non-stop. Upwards of 300 achievements seems excessive for any game, let alone one that took me half an hour to complete the 50 levels (on a trackpad no less). The achievements don't even relate to the game, instead of "complete level 17", most achievements are just assorted, unrelated words.

If you're willing to look past that, the game is passable. The levels difficulties are erratic, and many levels have far too few nodes for the board size, leading to dozens of possible trivial solutions. The UI is confusing, the various options are abbreviated into single letters in the upper right, which obscures what they do - I couldn't figure out what several of them did when I messed with it. I played without sound, so I can't say whether it fit or not. After every level it returns you to the level section screen rather than the next level, which adds much more loading time than should be necessary. When moving the cursor quickly along a path the game wouldn't always keep up and sometimes flashed black polygons on screen. However, it is free, and it did occupy me for half an hour with some easy puzzles (on a different account so I could look past the achievements).

If you're a fan of this type of puzzle, I'd recommend Dots Extreme. Same type of puzzles, but much more interesting, and it took me 70 times as long to complete. If you're willing to look past the meaningless achievement spam, I guess this is okay for a free game, but there's much better alternatives.

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LineWay is a fairly basic puzzle game. The mechanics are pretty simple, and while it did introduce some mechanics, nothing felt revolutionary. A lot of the early levels felt obvious, but some of the later ones did have me stumped for a bit. Fairly basic UI and music which works well for the game (I thought the simple music fit particularly well). It is short - took me around 50 minutes to beat - but for the price, that's fair. It isn't the most memorable puzzle game I've played, but I did enjoy it.

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Entangle is a puzzle game that is clever and satisfying, but not too terribly challenging. It does a great job making the simple mechanics into an excelent game. Almost all levels can be solved by just moving pieces around, but some do require planning. Took me around 3 hours to complete and I enjoyed it throughout.

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Hexcells Infinite is an awesome conclusion to the Hexcells series. The puzzles are extremely well crafted and relaxing to play. It introduces mechanics quickly and uses them well to form the great hand-crafted levels. The level generator is a great addition, and it allows for you to play the game whenever you need a break even if the main levels are complete. I find the random levels usually only take a few minutes, and aren't nearly as hard as the last few levels of the 'campaign'.

Achievements are tied to completing the levels with few mistakes, which doesn't require you to go too far out of your way, and for doing 60 of the random levels, which takes a few additional hours.

Pick up the bundle of the three Hexcells games if you want really excellent puzzles.

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It hurts. I quite enjoy minimalistic puzzle games, but I just can't recommend this one due to a large number of factors that just led to the game being unenjoyable for me (specifically visuals, audio, 'missing' features, and level design). My primary grievance was just the aesthetic of the game itself. While the whole neon theme of 'Glowing Sokoban' seemed neat in theory, in practice when coupled with the moving background it just hurt to look at after just a few consecutive levels. They did add options to disable the moving background, which I quickly toggled and left off, but this doesn't affect the title screen. Even with this off though the neon colors of the elements with a flat background hurt to look at if I played for too long in one sitting, and this detracted a lot from the game's experience.

The music also didn’t help at all. Although the game boasts '13 soundtracks', they are all fairly short loops that sound very similar and quickly became annoying. What made the music unbearable to me was the fact that a different track would be selected every time you beat a level or restarted, and it did so by very harshly cutting off the previous track and beginning the new one. On top of that, the background color scheme changes at the same time, which furthers the visual grievances I mentioned above. When I turned off the dynamic backgrounds, I also muted all the music of the game.

The game is also lacking in a few gameplay features that I would have expected. There is no level select option, each level just leads to the next. If you load up a save once you've beaten all the levels it just takes you to the end game screen from where you can only return to the main menu, so at any time you can only ever access the next level in an existing save or create a new save. The game had a reset level option (bound to 'r', as seemed natural), but there was no button to step back a single move (which I would have expected on 'backspace'). To make that issue worse, not every input would be registered, so when moving along a long path, I would often stop too early and ruin the level because some key presses were lost, and without a backspace option I was forced to then restart the level. When completing a level, it would sometimes take a few seconds to register the victory, and during that time if you moved a piece you could be forced into a state where you have to start completely over (this happened once to me). And while the game describes itself as "You need to place all the blue rings on the red squares at the least number of moves", the number of moves taken is completely irrelevant. It does track how many move you make, but there is no incentive to minimize that, unless you want to go back and one-up yourself (which you'll need to start a new playthough and beat all levels up to that point to even attempt).

The levels design also seemed lacking. The levels were of a huge variety of difficulties, and mildly difficult levels would be sometimes followed with several trivially easy ones. Among the 60 levels, a few were at least mildly challenging, and a single one had me stumped for around 20 minutes. Even the hard levels didn't feel satisfying to complete, the difficulty just felt like an annoyance. Many of the levels would also have portions that were pointless, like pieces that started in their goal position and never moved or unusable areas of the map. This led to levels that have numerous possible solutions, and many where the solution was visually obvious from the moment the level was presented. Take for example level 27: http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1132003033 The one square at the top is completely unusable, but so is the entire section to the right of the map. Not only is it pointless, but with the mechanics of the game, it is fundamentally unusable. Things like these lead most levels to have sections that just go unused and don't add to the game in any way.

With the dynamic background and audio disabled, it is a passable puzzle game, and the fundamental mechanics do work, despite the missing features that one would expect from a game such as this, so it is probably best to give this game a pass. Even though it is cheap, your money could be spent much better elsewhere.

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Hexcells Plus is a great puzzle game, and a great continuation of the first Hexcells game. Much like the first game, the base mechanic is that tiles are either marked blue or give a number representing the number of blue tiles adjacent to them, somewhat similar to minesweeper. But the game takes that base mechanic, adds a few other basic mechanics (number of blue in a column, marking that some need to be consequtive, having some '?' tiles), and builds it into a wonderfully satisfying and relaxing puzzle game. The music is ambient, and actions taken in game generate tones that go with the music as well. All puzzles can be solved without guessing and have a single solution, so when playing, I find it most enjoyable to take my time and only take action when I know it is correct.

The puzzles largely pick up where the first game left off. While there is some introduction to the mechanics, it is done in levels that serve to introduce the mechanics while also providing some challenge if you played through the first game. The levels (36 in total) grow in difficulty more quickly than in the first, but even the last few levels, although they can take some time to carefully comb through, remain enjoyable and approachable. The new mechanic, blue cells with numbers that give the number of tiles within 2 blocks, is used well, and makes for neat levels that are just as good, if not better than the levels in the first game. It took me about 7 hours to play through the game originally, and a majority of that time is on the last few, larger, levels (it took me around 40 minutes to do level 35 when I played through a second time, though I probably could have been faster if I'd wanted).

All achievements but 'Perfectionist' will be unlocked simply by playing through the levels. 'Perfectionist' requires that you beat all levels with no more than 1 mistake each, so if you play through each level the first time with that in mind, it too will be unlocked after a single playthrough. If any levels are completed with more than 1 mistake, you can simply redo them again, so all in all the achievements for this game are straightforward.

The Hexcells series is wonderful, and I highly suggest you pick up the complete pack of all 3 if you enjoy peaceful deductive puzzle games.

For more puzzle game and platformer recommendations, check out my Curator page