I am a fan of minimalist puzzle games, so this week we are going to take a look at three games from a Turkish developer named Yunus Ayyildiz. With a number of mobile games to his name already lets see how the his Steam releases stack up.
HOCUS
The oldest release and the one I have played the most, hocus has been in my library for a while and every few months I play a couple of levels of this MC Esher-esque game. The goal is to navigate the red cube along the paths to the red space. Easier said than done. The way the objects fold over each other and with tricks of perspective it can take some doing to figure out the right path. With simple controls (single mouse click - controller works good too) it's easy to get the hang of hocus.
Hocus also has a full level editor and creator - you can make your own levels and share them with others via a code system. It's as well implimented as it could be (no Steam Workshop support) as you have to copy/paste the codes from the game's discussion forum but an editor is a lot more than most small mobile style puzzle games offer.
The game's UI gives away it's mobile roots, with obvious buttons and interactions of that style. Few settings and not even an exit button (you gotta hit esc to close) put this firmly in the quick port catagory but I don't mind - the puzzles and the look are great. I am a little over half-way though hocus's 100 levels and I have no doubt I will continue to play through them.
VOI
With this game the developer's ability to make puzzles that designed to trick your mind to look at things differently shows once again. VOI has you moving pre-cut shapes around on a small dot-grid in an attempt to make the final image pictured on the right. The trick? When black shapes overlap other black shapes the parts that cover each other turn white. So the puzzle is to make each of the given shapes overlap to hide and recolor until you get the target shape.
Like hocus, VOI has a minimal (acutally less) UI really showing the moblie portiness (not a word). Once again due to the quality of actual gameplay it's not a big deal but would have been nice. It's not as hard a hocus and I tore through over half of the 66 levels in about 30 minutes.
PUZZLEMENT
The most recent release is game that feels much more geared to being played on a PC. In fact it requires a keyboard to play! Though I could see how the controls would be set up for touch. Once again you are controlling a little red avatar, this time a Pac-Man ghost looking guy rather than a cube and the game interactions are much more complex. You can move left to right, jump and even climb as you manouver around the odd angled grid world collecting the red squares.
Unfortunatly I found the actual puzzle of Puzzlement to be dealing with the controls, they always work, but figuring out which button to press when upside down at a 45 degree angle and you can only turn left and right quite agrivating. This isn't the first game I have had this issue - something about angled isometric views mess with my ability to grasp them. But maybe that is the point? At about the half way mark through the game I have only found a few of the 50 levels to actually be puzzling.
*******
So there we go, three quite different puzzle games from a developer who clearly has a passion for them. You can pick up all 3 for $5 and I don't see why not. While I think hocus is the clear winner overall, VOI is also a contender and maybe you won't have the control issues I did with Puzzlement. Heck maybe grab them for you mobile device of choice instead. Games like these are definitely worth supporting.
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