Review: Spb Puzzle

Score:
84%

Author: SPB Software

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Ewan's reaction ("A jigsaw? Ugh") when asked to review 'Spb Puzzle' spoke volumes about the modern perception that jigsaws are old-school and boring. And how on earth could a humble jigsaw be implemented in a fun and interesting way on a phone?

Traditional cardboard jigsaws have several fundamental flaws:

1. They take too long to solve (sometimes days)
   
2. They're not portable and require a large flat surface that's not going to be disturbed
   
3. You have to take the images that you're given (i.e. that you buy)
   
4. It's easy to lose a piece and wreck the possible satisfaction of a completed jigsaw
   
5. Pieces are restricted in shape by the need to stay reasonably pristine, i.e. you can't have really thin sections or awkwardly protruding 'keys'
6. If you buy lots of puzzles it can work out expensive
   

Spb Puzzle, remarkably, solves all these issues:

1. With three difficulty levels (determining the size of the pieces), puzzle time can be brought down to 10 minutes if needed
   
2. The game goes wherever your phone goes and can be put into the background and picked up whenever convenient
   
3. You can use any photo you care to load up. Snap a nice lake (as I did here) with your phone's camera and then use it for your jigsaw one minute later!
   
4. All the pieces are digital and so can't be lost. Moreover, they're all maintained in the game in correct orientation, reducing the workload and making the jigsaw more fun (ok, slightly easier, but I'm not complaining)
   
5. Because the puzzles are all digital, every piece in the jigsaw can be a different shape, and weird and wonderful piece shapes are possible.
6. Spb Puzzle comes with 10 'classic' images, so that's ten jigsaws (30 if you count the different difficulty levels) for your $10, plus you can add your own, as just mentioned, and when registered there are many extra packs of puzzles available online, making it far, far cheaper than the cardboard variety
   

   

Making full use of the Nokia 5800 (and N97's) high resolution, resistive touch-screen, Spb Puzzle has a sumptuously responsive interface when used with the stylus (for finer control than with a stubby finger). Pieces can be dragged around at will, ditto the playing surface itself, since most puzzles will end up being quite a bit larger than the screen - the result is a lot of stylus (or finger nail) work, but it's all intuitive and satisfying.

Where Spb Puzzle really scores is in its built in intelligence, taking it light years beyond the physical puzzle. When a piece meets its matching neighbour, it's locked firmly in place with a reassuring vibrator pulse and with a flashing border. You then drag the assembly of one or more pieces around as one. This auto-docking behaviour can also produce nice surprises when dragging a piece around the board - you'll feel the pulse, see the flash and hey presto, you've got a match at random and you're now dragging around two pieces rather than one.

Against the computer version is the way you can't spread the pieces out as cleanly and many are normally on 'top' of each other early on in the game. Spb Puzzle handles these situations cleanly and it always feels as if the piece selected is the one you meant to move (i.e. the one on top). Moreover, when the puzzle is nearly complete and there's little background showing it can be hard to spot the leftover pieces which will be lying on top of existing, placed pieces - Spb Puzzle knows this as starts the last few pieces blinking, so that you can spot them easily - the developers really have thought of everything.

  

I have to admit to being sceptical when seeing this title appear - I've found jigsaws boring ever since I was 10 years old - yet having loaded up my lake picture as a medium difficulty puzzle, I found myself utterly glued to the game and determined to finish the thing. When setting up an image or finishing it, Spb have even put in some nice transition effects, showing the cutting into pieces and the subsequent reassembly.

Perhaps not for everyone owning a compatible touch-screened S60 phone, but if there's even a chance you might like this then I urge you to give it a try - you might be as surprised as I was.

Steve Litchfield

Reviewed by Steve Litchfield at 19:43 UTC, May 14th 2009