Dissembler review - A mobile puzzle game with a good deal to offer
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iOS
| Dissembler
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Dissembler is a mix between a colour matching game and a tile-sliding puzzler. But it's far more interesting than that simple description makes it sound.

It's tough, it's smart, and its minimal art style leaves you with an uncluttered and engaging piece of pocket art.

Plus it's going to have you scratching your head in the best possible way. This isn't a game that tries to catch you out, but it is one where a single mistake is going to have you tapping the rewind button.

Dissemble this

Things take place on a grid. That grid is covered with coloured squares. You need to get rid of those squares by matching them in combinations of three or more.

Tap on a square and you can slide the block up, down, left, or right. You can only change a block's position if you're creating a match though, which adds another layer of difficulty to proceedings.

Things start off simple, but soon you're playing on large grids, with numerous coloured blocks, and trying to get them all in the right place becomes something of a logistical nightmare.

Dissembler iOS screenshot 1

Dissembler is by no means an easy game. But it doesn't bark out your mistakes or try and con you. There's a rewind button on every level that lets you go back a step. And the deeper you get into the experience, the more you're going to be using it.

Everything the game does is within the simple framework that it sets out from the very start. It's just that that simple framework offers up far more complexity than you might imagine when you first set off.

There are levels where matches will be made from the first time you move, and levels that give you a lonely single square a full grid away from anything you can match it with.

Dissemble that

If there's a problem with Dissembler it's the pace of the experience. If you get stuck, and you will, you're going to find yourself jammed on to a level until you figure out what you're trying to do.

There's a daily mode that offers up a number of puzzles, and an infinite mode that lets you play a more relaxed, or difficult version, but when you're stuck in the core game you're stuck until you work out a solution.

All the same, Dissembler is an entertaining change of speed for mobile puzzling. There's a lot to do, and it makes you think in new and exciting ways on a regular basis.

Dissembler review - A mobile puzzle game with a good deal to offer

A bright, intelligent puzzler that makes you think through every move that you make
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.