Puzzle Flip is a great game that will have you turning your iPhone to complete the puzzles until you forget which was is up. See the full review below.
Price: $1.99
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FLIP review by : Steve Woolf
Many games which utilize both the touch screen and the accelerometer tend to run into problems with the overall control. FLIP is one of those games, but once you get the hang of it, it’s actually a lot of fun.
Developed by eBattalion, FLIP has three game modes: Standard, Puzzle and Speed. In Standard mode, colored gems fall down from the top and your job is to match them with other colored gems below so they will vanish from the board. As you advance in the game, falling gems increase speed, and the minimum number of gems you must match increases. À la Tetris, once you run out of room for the gems to drop, your game is over. To maneuver the gems, you will have to use the accelerometer and tilt the iPod gently left or right to guide them into the columns below. You can wait for them to drop to the floor on its own, or you can select the column by pressing on the screen which will cause the gem to ‘warp’ into place below. The shtick which separates this game from others is when you don’t like the way your board looks, just flip the iPhone/Touch 90 degrees either way and your board shifts giving you a new look – what used to be the wall of the board is now your new floor.
In Puzzle mode you are given a certain amount of flips to place the colored gems into their designated pulsing colored spaces. As the game progresses, the puzzles become more complex and involves more thinking than the other modes. This was my favorite mode as the games are shorter and you get instant gratification when you finally solve them.
In Speed mode you need to place the same colored gems together (horizontally or vertically) in a puzzle format. You can flip as many times as you want, but you must solve before the timer runs out. Sounds easy, but trust me, it’s not.
While FLIP’s graphics are simple and easy to look at, the music is just horrible. Think of the worst elevator music you have ever heard, and multiply that by 10. You may not mind it initially, but take it from me, the more you play this game, the more you just want to mute it. Thankfully, eBattalion allows you to either adjust the volume level, or play your iPod music in the background.
FLIP’s gameplay is fun – and has good lasting appeal. There are nearly 200 puzzles in Puzzle and Speed modes, a global and local scoring system, and you can suspend a game in progress to resume at a later time. Keep in mind that there are a couple of control issues which take some time to get used to. For example, in Standard mode, if you don’t use the touch screen to warp the gems into place, you may get frustrated enough to never play this game again. Once you do utilize the touch screen control, FLIP will begin to entertain you for some time. Another issue is that the accelerometer is a bit too sensitive.
Other than some learning curves for the controls, FLIP is an enjoyable challenging game and offers enough modes to keep the average iPod gamer occupied. FLIP is worth a download for fans of this genre and is available at the iTunes app store for $2.99, or you can always try the Lite version out for free.
