Unblock Me (Free) has made me feel like a bit of a dummy leading up to writing this review. Usually when testing app games, the beginning puzzles or levels are decidedly amateur hour, simply meant to teach players the basics until the good stuff starts. Unblock Me (Free) takes a bit of a different tact.
This puzzle app is a challenge right from the get-go. At least, I hope so, or I am just embarrassingly bad at it. In Unblock Me, players attempt to get a small red block outside of a large square level by moving around the other blocks that surround the red block. Blocks that are laid out horizontally might only move left to right, and blocks lying vertically can only be moved up and down.
It is a devilishly simple concept that asks the player for a great deal of patience. You can see your red block, and its goal is ever so close, but you’ll end up moving blocks back and forth countless times in order to figure out just how to get the right amount of space to clear the level.
Unblock Me comes with two modes. One, the Challenge mode, keeps track of how many moves you make and scores you once you’ve finished a level. If you’re taking your sweet time, you can always reset the level so your move counter isn’t absurdly high, which is a touch I appreciated.
The other way to play is the Relax mode, which is the same as the Challenge mode, but your every move isn’t documented so you feel like much less of a failure when it takes you 20 moves just to clear the first puzzle.
Players can also select any of the 400 levels individually. Yes, 400 levels. It’s unlikely you’ll need the paid version of this app, as the free version is awfully robust.
Although I found Unblock Me (Free) frustratingly difficult at times, that doesn’t dissuade me from recommending it to puzzle fans. This free set of very well-designed puzzles should keep gamers occupied for quite a while, assuming they don’t throw their phone into the wall first.
