Puzzler World 2011

It seems as if the Puzzler magazine brand is setting itself up for the long haul on DS. This third entry in the series is the first to sport a year in its title, suggesting that FIFA-esque yearly updates are inevitable.

That puts developer Team 3 Games in a somewhat unenviable position. Previous entries in the Puzzler pantheon have been fairly standard number and picture-a-thons – hardly the stuff creative developers dreams are made of.

But could Puzzler World 2011 finally be the game to break free of the shackles that held its predecessors back from puzzling perfection? Or is it just another acceptable but ultimately humdrum conundrum collection? Take a wild guess.

Lost for words

It will be no surprise to hear that, yes, this is much the same as the two previous Puzzler efforts, but with some tweaks made here and there.

All the brain-teasers from 2009’s Puzzler World are here, with Sudoku, Crossword, Fitword, Pieceword, Wordsearch, Backword, Link-a-Pix, and Silhouette all contributing to the 560 puzzles in the game’s main Challenge mode. Most of these games all work exactly as their names would suggest.

Link-a-Pix is the exception to this, and is the best game in the whole collection. Involving linking different coloured numbers together with lines to help form a picture, it’s not quite as enjoyable and logic driven as nonogram champion Picross DS, but it'll still devour hours of your time if given the chance. Your only obstacle will be initially figuring out how it works (the in-game instructions are basic and largely unhelpful).

Each of these 500 plus puzzles has an optional bonus game to accompany it, and must be completed against the clock. These puzzles include Hangman, Chain Letters, Add-up, Jigsaw, Picture Quiz, Sum-up, Splitwords, and Colour-in. Again, these are played precisely as you'd think they would. A fair few are new to the Puzzler series, though, and offer welcome bite-sized challenges that help to break up some of the game's weightier challenges.

Quick play has been jettisoned in this entry but an all-new Master mode with harder puzzles more than makes up for that.

Picky-cross

So, in terms of content, the game can’t be faulted. Frequently sloppy presentation, however, does much to dampen the logic-based fun.

The first point of irritation comes through the game having to be played in a sideways 'book' format, with nearly everything controlled by the touchscreen.

Although the game is obviously attempting to mimic a puzzle book, it would have been nice to have the option to play it by holding the DS au naturel. Button controls would have been especially welcome for games such as Link-a-Pix, where the occasionally unresponsive touchscreen controls do nothing but slow you down.

Handwriting recognition can also be a minor problem (although you can train the game to recognise your personal scribbling style), and games such as Wordsearch and Spot the Difference can cause eye-strain thanks to some of the low-res graphics on offer.

I’m board

Beside these small qualms, the biggest problem with the game is that it doesn’t actually seem to realise it’s on DS. This was a cited problem with Puzzler Collection back in 2008, and it’s a criticism that still stands. Head-to-head multiplayer (or even a pass-and-play mode) and online high-score tables would have been easy to implement, but they are sadly nowhere to be found here.

There’s also no option to scroll around larger puzzle grids with a flick of the stylus – it’s all done with rudimentary touch-operated direction arrows that make it even more perplexing that the D-pad wasn’t an navigation option.

And beyond a spinning wheel of fortune that spans both screens, the game does little to engage your eyes as well as your brain.

In all, the game is best likened to winning a prize of a week's break in an old fashioned lodge in Cornwall – it’s fun in its own ramshackle way, but the more demanding of us will have hoped and wished for something much, much better.