Review: Doodle Fit
Score:
74%
Now this I like. It’s a huge number of little jigsaws, all gathered under just one application. And rather than use actual jigsaw pieces (which to be honest could look a bit twee) you get nothing more than pieces made up of smaller squares (think the leftover pieces of a game of Tetris) and a shape to fit them into. Here's my All About Symbian and Ovi Gaming review...
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That’s it.
You know what, you don’t need anything else in this game. Sure you could add power-ups, special blocks, bonus shapes inside the main shapes, but sometimes you just want a vanilla challenge in your life that’s going to take a fair amount of time to work through the levels. Doodle Fit delivers that.
Naturally on the touch screen this is pretty easy to control, and the only potential issue – your finger obscuring where the puzzle piece you are playing should go – has been avoided by some smart thinking. When you tap and hold a piece, it floats just above your finger. So you can move it around, see where you want to drop it, and all without your finger getting in the way of the view. Smart.
It’s worth pointing out here that you can't rotate any of the pieces you’re given to solve the problem, and there can be more than one solution to each puzzle, especially on the earlier levels. The key to solving them is to find the one piece that everything has to be built around, such as where the 5x1 long strip fits into a 6x5 sized grid. If you do get stuck, you can ask for one of the few hints available on each level, which will point out a location for one of the pieces. The theory being that once you have one piece right, you can fit the others around in a slightly easier way.
Like any good puzzler, the difficulty curve is set well, with some basic puzzles to get you into the concept before the real brain teasers start.
And that’s about it. No flourishes, no extra specials, just a bundle of levels that you need to think hard about. Actually there is one thing. The look of the game.
You can go for either a chalkboard look (black background, white lines, good for saving battery power on the new AMOLED screens), or a notebook theme, which is an off white background and black lines. I’m intrigued by the fact that the lines are animated with a little shimmer, like some old 1970’s kids cartoon, but it does add to the charm of the game and makes it look distinctive, without being overpowering.
It’s a simple game, it appeals to me, and there’s not much more to say – mostly because I’m off to sneak in another few levels!
-- Ewan Spence, Jan 2011.
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at