Abigail Grover

5 great mobile puzzle games


Machinarium game


Almost everyone who has this smartphone is playing mobile games on a smartphone. But this is usually a rather useless activity, which only helps to distract yourself for a while and forget about business. But you can play with benefit, training logical thinking and solving difficult problems. Mel has put together five great puzzle games for mobile devices to puzzle over.


Monument Valley


Monument Valley will develop imagination and spatial thinking. The levels of the Monument Valley puzzle are similar to Escher's paintings come to life - they are optical illusions, intricate combinations of stairs and transitions that, at first glance, lead nowhere. But if you change the perspective a little, look at the location from a different point of view, and you will immediately find your way further. This is not the only puzzle of this type, but it is definitely one of the best in its genre.


At each location, the gameplay is built around one specific opportunity. Somewhere you will have to rotate the entire level, choosing the correct viewing angle, somewhere - deal with separate moving platforms, and somewhere you will have to resort to the help of a special column that can be moved along the level with the main character.


The passage of all ten locations of Monument Valley (each with several levels) will hardly take an adult more than an hour. Children will need more time. The application will help them develop imagination and spatial thinking, understand what perspective is. And perhaps even arouse an interest in geometry in players.


World of goo


In World of Goo, all objects obey the usual laws of physics. World of Goo is not the newest, but not less interesting puzzle about strange Goo balls. These creatures go on a journey to understand what kind of unusual pipes appeared on their island, as well as to find out what other secrets their world hides. The essence of World of Goo is to build various structures from these very balls (for example, bridges or towers), which will allow you to get to the pipe, that is, to the exit from the level.


The task does not seem difficult at first. But over time, the player gains access to new types of balls of different colors, each of which has its own unique abilities. For example, some of them can take off into the air, lifting the structure to which they are attached. Moreover, all objects obey the usual laws of physics, which makes World of Goo not only more interesting and challenging, but also cognitive.


Machinarium


Machinarium is a fun quest with challenging tasks

The Czech studio Amanita Design has released several projects, but, perhaps, it is Machinarium that still remains their best game. It combines a simple and touching story, interesting characters and, most importantly, fun gameplay.


Machinarium is not a pure puzzle. This is a quest in which you need to solve riddles to progress through the story. The events take place in a city inhabited by robots. You have to overcome many obstacles to save your mechanical girlfriend and prevent a terrible tragedy.


The game does not require any special skills, except that a little attention and the ability to build logical chains. Some of the puzzles that will come across on the path of the protagonist may seem too difficult, but it takes a little thought and you will be surprised at how obvious the solution was. If you do get stuck, you can always use the hint. Completing the game is an excellent brain training, which does not take much time.


Shadowmatic


Shadowmatic is a great simulator for imagination and spatial reasoning. An unpretentious puzzle, a simple shadow theater, transferred to mobile devices. The player is given an object of a bizarre shape and offered to rotate it until the shadow it casts on the wall looks like an object or animal. Sometimes the object is divided into several parts, which significantly complicates the game. Indeed, in this case, in order to obtain the correct silhouette, it is necessary not only to correctly rotate all the component parts, but also to correctly arrange them in space.


If you get stuck, you can always take a hint. They are rather vague and only hint at what kind of shadow you should get. But if you use the hint several times, they will tell you in plain text what object should turn out. This is a great simulator for imagination and spatial thinking, which, among other things, helps to calm down and relax. There is only an iOS version.



Sudoku by GREEN PANDA


As an ardent online Sudoku fan, I've been looking for a really handy app for a long time that allows you to click the number puzzle with maximum comfort. My search ended when I (quite by accident) discovered the free online Sudoku Daily app in the Android Market. In my opinion, this is the best Sudoku program ever created by mankind. Automatic color highlighting of numbers, pencil, unlimited undo, several types of prompts, automatic filling of possible candidates - this is just an incomplete list of functions of this excellent application. The game is available in paid and free versions, the free one allows you to solve one puzzle per day for each difficulty level.