Features

Top 5 best puzzle games on Android (2010)

Putting the pieces together

Top 5 best puzzle games on Android (2010)
|

Everyone likes puzzle games. They might not be your favourite type of game, but I guarantee we’ve all played and enjoyed one at some point in our lives.

Which probably explains why it continues to be one of the most, if not the most popular games genre around.

All of which makes it a little mystifying (puzzling, even) that aren’t any absolutely top notch puzzlers on Android. At least, there are none that we’ve seen yet.

Despite that though, there are plenty of very fine examples of the genre on the Android Market, and one or two glimpses of inspiration.

Let’s hope that the next time we compile a list of this kind there are one or two 9/10 games to put on it.

Puzzle Blox (André Rabold)

At an initial glance, Puzzle Blox has the least going for it out of all the games on this list. It’s extremely plain looking and plays like any number of match three puzzlers (in particular the Collapse series) on the market.

But one twist elevates it above all the other me-too puzzlers on the Android Market. By tilting your handset, you can change the pull of gravity accordingly, so all the coloured blocks shift to what was formerly the side wall or ceiling.

Challenge mode in particular makes full use of this mechanic, and really helps mark Puzzle Blox out as a deceptively fresh puzzle game.

Impossible Level Game (HyperBees)

I ummed and ahhed about including ILG on this list – not because it’s not good, but because it almost defies categorisation. It’s unlike anything else on this list.

Ultimately, though, it requires you to solve puzzles, so it’s a puzzler. You’re presented with a series of conundrums that, to quote our review, “test how much of a smartarse you are.”

These are riddles that test your powers of observation, how media-savvy you are and how alert to being tricked you are. It’s chaotic, slap-dash and downright amateurish in places. It’s also one of the most original games on the Android Market.

Bubble Town 2 (I-play)

Bringing to mind the arcade classic Puzzle Bobble/Bust-A-Move, Bubble Town 2 offers a familiar brand of action puzzling.

The idea is to ping coloured bubbles up the screen and into a pack, matching three or more together to make them disappear. To achieve this you can aim the bubbles and even bounce them off the side of the screen to position them just so.

It’s not a massively original premise, but Bubble Town 2 looks and plays very nicely indeed. What’s more, it’s significantly cheaper than the official Android version of Bust-A-Move.

Bonsai Blast (Glu)

What Bubble Town is to Puzzle Bobble, Bonsai Blast is to Puzzloop (or the later, more popular Zuma). That is, it’s a remarkably well polished clone of a classic puzzler. It’s not the only game to ape the popular snaking bubble popper, but it is one of the best.

A snaking conga line of bubbles works its way slowly across the screen, and you must get rid of each by matching three or more of each colour together. This is achieved by pinging fresh bubbles into the pack.

Glu adds one or two worthwhile ideas of its own, such as the ability to switch the location of the bubble shooter, granting you a new angle on the playing field.

Twiggle (Future Primitives)

As with Puzzle Blox, Twiggle works to a pretty generic match-three puzzler template – you combine coloured blocks (or blobs) to make them disappear. It also shares a similar handset-tilting twist.

But it goes beyond that with another innovative quirk – gesture control. Scrawling an ‘L’ shape on the screen will rotate your cute collection of blobs 90 degrees, while a ‘U’ shape will send them a full 180 degrees.

It works brilliantly, even on older Android hardware. It also benefits from a gorgeous hand-scrawled art style that imbues each blob with a small personality of their own. Beguiling stuff.

Jon Mundy
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.