Band Together

The puzzle genre is so broad that it may as well not exist. Any game that presents you with a problem and expects you to figure out the solution could claim to have puzzles, and that pretty much covers every release since the year dot.

Band Together is another game that challenges definition. Not fully a puzzler and not fully a platformer, it blends together a bunch of styles and throws in some unique visuals to create a pretty entertaining concoction.

The game is set in a cardboard box, and it sees you leading a group of creatures - known as bandies - over a variety of different obstacles. There are switches to push, spinning thumb-tack weapons to avoid, and sharpened pencils to dodge.

You slide your fingers across the screen to move the bandies, starting your swipe behind a group to move them all or on an individual bandie to just move one. While big swipes will move them farther, you'll find yourself inching them along soon enough, desperately trying to save all of them.

It all plays out like a more sedate version of Lemmings as you guide your bandies onto switches to manipulate the levels and free up paths to the exits. These won't open unless they're let, and later levels feature bandies with candles tied to their heads whom you need to use to shepherd the others.

Each level is well-designed, with solutions that aren't always apparent at first glance but clear enough that things don't get too frustrating. Saving one bandie is easy enough, but saving them all is often a pretty challenging task.

The mix of timing and logic you need to succeed makes for some entertaining levels. It's just a shame that there are only 30 to work through. Sometimes the controls also let things down, sending your bandies to their death when you wanted them to stop.

Still, Band Together is an entertaining piece of genre-mashing that looks and sounds original, and plays like few other games before it. It's not quite perfect, but it is a lot of fun.