• Gold Magic 800
  

  2 hours playtime

  no achievements

Puzzle game. You move on a per-unit basis, leaving a trail behind you. You have to cover exactly 80 tiles before getting the first number, at which point your trail turns into solid tiles. Then, you just have to focus on collecting each subsequent number, though you keep leaving a trail that keeps turning into solid tiles after each number you collect. Once you’ve gotten one of each number, you beat the level.

First thing you’ll notice is that the graphics are terrible. The 3D perspective looks super jarring and slapdash, and it doesn’t even show you the entire board! Thankfully, you can push Enter to swap to a top-down view; this view puts the entire board on-screen and doesn’t look as bad (but now the box you control can look a bit too similar to solid tiles).

Second thing you’ll notice is that the controls are a bit too sensitive. It’s possible to move two spaces accidentally, so you need to be quick when you tap the button if you only want to move one space. Worse, there’s no undo, so this can force a reset if it happens during the game’s more precise moments.

If you can look past those issues, there are some tricky puzzles here, though it takes until level 18 (out of 44) to start getting consistently tricky (there was only one kinda tricky level before then)…and then the difficulty goes back down from level 25 to level 36, and the only reason level 37 took me a moment to figure out is because it was just a mess of number tiles AND was the first to double the amount of numbers you need from eight to sixteen! After this, there were only four really tricky levels: 39, 41, 42, and 43, though part of what makes them hard is not only the lack of undo, but that the game makes you get the 80 tiles before getting the numbers; if you want to solve the paths between numbers first (which you kinda have to for those levels), you need to take a screenshot and draw the path out; then, you can see which tiles are leftover to account for the 80 you need to cover before getting the first number in the first place.

Adding to the shameless, slapdash feel is the fact that when you beat the last level, the stage theme keeps playing over the ending theme.

Overall, the game is pretty mediocre, but since it’s free, I can recommend it for the somewhat tricky puzzles it does have.