Review: Simon Tatham's Puzzle Collection (STPuzzles)
Score:
89%
Version Reviewed: 0.90
Buy Link | Download / Information Link
New device, new software. Nothing from my existing collection of applications will work, and while I know what apps I’d like on the new UIQ3 devices, this first review is somewhat of a surprise. I started doing a trawl for some freeware games and came across STPuzzles. Quite frankly, it’s a little gem, and knowing that a weight of cash-in-quick puzzle games are going to be shortly flooding the UIQ3 software market at $20 a pop, to see such a comprehensive collection here, for free, is very very impressive. Nothing in STPuzzles is original – FiendSoft readily admit this in both the help file and all the descriptions that they post on the web sites. It is a port of Simon Tatham’s Portable Puzzle Collection, and Simon’s original documentation sums up the aim of this collection more admirably than I could, so I’m going to quote:
"I wrote this collection because I thought there should be more small desktop toys available: little games you can pop up in a window and play for two or three minutes while you take a break from whatever else you were doing. And I was also annoyed that every time I found a good game on (say) Unix, it wasn't available the next time I was sitting at a Windows machine, or vice versa; so I arranged that everything in my personal puzzle collection will happily run on both those platforms and more."
Inside the UIQ3 version there are 24 different puzzle games: BlackBox, Bridges, Cube, Dominosa, Fifteen, Flip, Guess, Intertia, Light Up, Loopy, Map, Mines, Net, Netslide, Pattern, Pegs, Rectangles, SameGame, Sixteen, Slant, Solo, Tents, Twiddle and Untangle. I’m not going to plough through them all here, I’m just going to choose my three favourites. But the strength of this package is that I’m sure everyone will have a different set of favourites, and the included help file details how to play each game.
Lets glance at three of the games – the ones that I personally have been playing with over the last week or so. First up is Rectangles. You get a grid with a splattering of numbers. Your aim is to draw rectangles, and inside each box is a single number that reflects the exact number of small boxes in that box.
In Bridges you are presented with a group of islands (strangely, all lined up nicely horizontally and vertically) and each island says how many bridges connect it to the adjacent islands. All you need to do is draw the bridges in and create the public transport system for the islands.
And then there’s Untangle. This is just superb. You have a circle of blue dots, and each blue dot is connected to a number of other blue dots in a mess of lines. What you have to do is move the dots around so that the lines (which stay connected to the dots as they move) do not cross any other lines. Think of this as a not-quite Gordian knot and you’re there. It’s frustratingly addictive, as are most of the puzzles in this package. It’s the ultimate ‘just one more go’ collection.
What’s interesting in all these games is there’s a simple goal to achieve. There are no time limits or other artificial constructs to limit the game. You are left with a pure logical challenge. And as you can tweak each game’s difficulty settings (for example in Untangle you can have 6, 10, 15, 20 or 25 points connected), you can play at a challenging level for yourself, and slowly up the skill.
Being a direct port, there are a few niceties missing – it would be nice to have some sort of high score table, or have a preference file that remembered your skill settings for each game. And that alone shades this title away from being a 90%+ Megagame, but only just.
People go on about casual gaming (a term that I’m really loathe to use) but STPuzzles is a great little application to dip into when you have a few minutes and are in need of a diversion. It’s like the puzzle page of a Daily Newspaper, always available on your phone. Objectively, if this had a $20 price tag on it, I think it would still be value for money – but being freeware there’s no reason that it shouldn’t be on every UIQ3 device.
Ewan Spence
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at