Fling!
This is a well crafted, nicely designed app on the surface. Underneath it is a real good lesson in planning, pattern recognition and logic. Early levels are for 10 and under. Harder Levels are worth the challenge. Sequencing is an important part of this game, teaching you that there is a logical order to things in order to solve puzzles. Don’t be distracted by the cute fuzzies. This puzzle can wear you out.
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Ankagua3D XL
For fans of Sokoban, or transport puzzle games in which the player pushes boxes around a maze, viewed from above, and tries to put them in designated locations, this could be one of the best versions out there. The fact you must push (never pull) boxes in certain sequences challenges your logic center to establish patterns, ordering and often subgoals to reach the final goal. It can even rival chess in how to plan multiple moves ahead.
This type of planning is actually used in designing robotic programs for moving objects in a warehouse. This is a definite brain exerciser.
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Tripletters
This game has more of a Game Show Network feel as you spin for three letters on a roulette type wheel. It ends there. You must then attempt to form words using each letter once, but try your darndess to use them multiple times. Example: K E O – spell BOOKKEEPER and score big points.
The challenge then is to expand your knee jerk reaction to spell simple words and stretch your thinking for more complex wording. The fact there are a bunch of bells and whistles shouldn’t distract you from the cognitive word building going on in this game.
Bosworth
Not really sure why this game is named after a butler or actress, but calling it Reversi or Othello would have violated some copyright somewhere. In reality it is a Reversi style game with some added twists that makes this game a real brain challenge. Traditional Reversi pits two opponents and their two sided color chips battling it out on an 8 x 8 board. Object: End the game with most of the chips with your color facing up. Bosworth adds a third player on a larger hexagonal board of 91 spaces.
The abstract strategy of this game requires the lookahead principle which is difficult in a Reversi game that has as many as 10 to the 28th power of outcomes. Don’t ask me to write that number. The computer players are dumbed down some in Bosworth (probably because a human hasn’t beaten a computer in Othello since 1980) and makes for very challenging play.
Cross Fingers
This is a masterpiece in puzzle shape games, otherwise known as Tangram Puzzle. A Tangram Puzzle is a dissection puzzle consisting of multiple flat shapes, called tans, which are put together to form other distinct shapes. The game has roots going back 1100 years to wooden puzzle game in China. Interestingly, Cross Finger uses wooding shaped pieces to test you eye for symmetry, shapes and ability to build finite shapes from abstract construction of dissected pieces. What makes this game more challenging is the departure from the 7 piece puzzle to some using 20 or more pieces.
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:Shift:
One of my favorite games. Shift is an escapist platformer game, where you are in a stark black and white world looking for a way out of multiple rooms. The beautiful twist to this game, and what creates such a mind-bending challenge, is the Shift. The Shift is where you flip the room, not only from top to bottom but from black to white and white to black. It creates all sorts of opposites in gravity, motion and direction. You never stop thinking while working the puzzle.
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