Movin’ Maze: more paired movement

In various earlier post I presented mazes which are made more difficult because different objects are moving at the same time, constrained by specific rules. Movin’ Maze 3D (and the free version Movin’ Maze 3D Lite) presents yet another variation on this theme (a screenshot is shown to the right here). It is a nicely made puzzle, though there are so many options and possibilities that the puzzling aspect is a bit lost in the joyful chaos.

Hidden Treasures: Cloning the clone

Robert Abbott’s Theseus and the Minotaur is one of the puzzles on the app store with more depth (see my earlier post for more details). In 2002 the game was cloned by PopCap for their online game Mummy Maze (shown here to the right). This game explicitly credits Robert Abbott, although this did not happen automatically (see this post for more details on that history). Yet, PopCap actually did add some new aspects to the puzzle. Those new additions are now cloned by a new iPhone game, though without any credit (once again).

The T(ea)-puzzle: Tangram reinvented

Four cardboard pieces were included in a box of White Rose Ceylon Tea distributed by Seeman Brothers of New York in 1903. On one of the pieces was written: “Arrange these four pieces of cardboard so as to form a perfect T. White Rose Ceylon is a perfect Tea.” This puzzle has been copied many times, mostly simply known as T-puzzle. When you see the solution (shown here to the right), then this puzzle seems obviously simple. However, when you are given the pieces disassembled, then the assembly appears to be really hard.

Tangram: a primer on assembly puzzles

Among the large class of Put Together puzzles, there is a subclass of puzzle that can be technically classified as non-interlocking 2D assembly puzzles. Probably the most well-known puzzle of this kind is Tangram, but there are very many different kinds of puzzles, also in the app store. The principle of such puzzles is that pieces have to assembled to form a particular configuration. This is just like jig-saw puzzles, though those are typically interlocking.

The following Tangram implementations are available for the iPhone:

More movement-until-blocked puzzles

In an earlier post I introduced movement-until-blocked puzzles. The idea of such puzzles is that there are various objects to be moved towards a goal. Each object can be moved separately, and in any direction possible. However, the catch is that the movement will continue until it is blocked by a wall or another moveable object. In that earlier post and the follow-up I presented six different iPhone puzzles that used this principle. In the meantime two more have become available: Atomix and D-Star. Both are remakes of earlier games known under the same names.

Kim did it again …

In my earlier post on Vexed I mentioned the Vexed-clone by the korean developer Kim Byung Kwon. I was highly critical of that app because Kim did not refer to the GNU-license of the original game by James McCombe. Now, it turns out (as discussed in the comments to that post) that James McCombe was possibly not the true originator of that puzzle anyway.

However, Kim did it again, though this time with sliding block puzzles! He simply copied some of the best sliding block puzzles from Nick Baxter’s Sliding Block Page and now sells them for one dollar as Sliding Puzzle (iTunes link), without any mention of the originators! Let me rectify this at least here: the puzzles shown on the screenshot in iTunes are by Junichi Yananose, Serhiy Grabarchuk, Minoru Abe, and Ed Pegg Jr.

Kim’s webpage is difficult to decifer (neither my nor google’s knowledge of Korean is sufficient to really make sense of this page). If somebody know how to contact this person, please let me know. I find this unacceptable.

Fissionquest: Sokoban in 3D

FissionQuest (and its lite version FissionQuest Lite) present another take on Sokoban-like puzzles (see my earlier posts on such puzzles). This game is like Sokoban in 3D, though you also have to watch out not to fall down to death.

iEscape: Sokoban on the edge

An interesting puzzle concept is available in iEscape, iEscape LITE, and RabbitEscape (the last one is shown here to the right). They are all from the same developer, and basically just different packages around the same puzzle concept. The puzzles are closely related to Sokoban (see my earlier post on classic Sokoban ports for the iPhone). The difference to Sokoban is, in a nutshell, that the “blocks” to be pushed around are now placed in the edges of the graph, instead of on the vertices. So, one could call this “Sokoban on the edge”-puzzles.

Nodes: advanced connecting dots

Very many interesting games and puzzle concepts are being developed by the flash-gaming community. An example of such an interesting puzzle is Nodes, developed by Eggy (Bradley Erkelens) with the assistance some not further clarified person named Frank. The goal of the puzzle is to position the nodes of a graph in such a way that the vertices cross through a set of small circles. This game is also available on the iPhone, though unfortunately not through Eggy, nor with his consent.