ROOMS: The Toymaker's Mansion

This is a bargain for the amount of play you get out of it. It took me about 3 weeks to collect the 3 puzzles pieces for each of the 108 levels. It’s possible to complete the game without going online for level walkthroughs, but I did have to use a notebook and pencil to help figure out the correct moves for completing many of the levels in the shortest number of moves to collect all of the puzzle pieces. Having a back button to allow you to undo moves would take a lot of the tedium out of collecting all of the puzzle pieces because you wouldn’t have to restart every time you made a single wrong move.

These puzzles are very hard. The hint system is completely inscrutable. You’re cajoled into “starting over” if you don’t solve it in the minimum possible moves, and rated on your performance if you solve it but take “too long”. Because of these degrading computerized assessments I’ve knocked it down from five stars. If you are able to ignore the assessment criticisms from the computer it’s still a beautiful, fun game. (Though why our heroine always wears a pathetically worried look remains the final puzzle to me.) To developer: I like the puzzle difficulty. I don’t like the character judging me. Replace it with a move counter that’s always on screen and that’d be fine.

Gorgeous graphics. Very difficult. If, like me, you can not visualize the moves in your head you are going to have to really work at this game. I think it’s worth the effort. I had one problem: when I cleared the last level the first story page came up in Korean! The rest were in English - very strange. I would also like to put in a word for those of us who don’t play connected to the internet. I can’t see the trophy page, and don’t get credit for the ones I have earned even when I am connected. Not everyone wants to live online.