Go!

Blocks, as it were, are all the rage in 2008. iPhone serves as a breeding ground for them, with little match-three blocks here and boardgame blocks there. If you look carefully, you can even see a couple rare rolling block varieties in the distance. Go! attempts to survive in the fierce block ecosystem by twisting it with jigsaw gameplay. It's enough to survive out in the open, yet far from crowning it king of the jungle.

Go! presents a series of 50 puzzles completed by inserting patterned blocks. Inspired by Tetris, these blocks come in nine different patterns from a 3x3 square to a 3x1 line and several 'L'-shaped configurations. The similarities end there, however, as you manually place blocks onto the puzzle according to colour and the designated pattern. It's not a matter of just making all the pieces fit – you need to make the blocks work in the coloured spaces provided.

Three colours – green, blue, and pink – possess discrete areas on each puzzle. You can only place green pieces in those areas shaded light green. Since you have a specific number of pieces per colour to fit into the puzzle, the challenge lies in getting every piece onto the board correctly.

The familiarity of the shapes makes it easy to get into Go! because you're immediately comfortable working with them. Since there are only nine different patterns (a few of which are mirrored versions of others), the number of possible combinations is limited. This is a good thing since the game focuses on using those few blocks and combinations in a variety of challenging puzzles. In other words, Go! relies on the strength of its puzzle design.

That, however, doesn't preclude a lack of faults. Puzzles possess one solution and one solution only, which makes finishing later levels quite difficult. You're not able to move individual pieces around the board at will; instead, you're forced to remove all pieces of a single colour and reassign them to the board if you make a mistake. It's frustrating, particularly if you're close to completing a level. Being able to move blocks about the board would have made Go! infinitely better.

It also would reduce the time spent solving puzzles. Points are awarded based on your completion time, a clock ticking away the seconds in the upper-right corner. These are tagged to each puzzle and also contribute to an overall Go! Score. You can even send an email to a buddy challenging them to a high-score from within the game, although there's no actual multiplayer.

Reasonable pricing ensures Go! is a good value, especially considering how many puzzles it packs. It isn't enough, however, to counter the sense that it's underdeveloped. The core gameplay works and is enjoyable, yet more features need to be added to make the experience fluid. A decent, if a touch mediocre game.