Stem Stumper

There were, at last count, 86.2 million billion puzzle games on the App Store, which means if you’re planning to make a new game in that particular genre you need something special to stand out from the crowd.

Stem Stumper does indeed have a unique hook, and it’s this: you can play it if you’re blind.

Developer Ananse Productions deserves credit for that. And it truly is blind-accessible, as it supports VoiceOver, so all the key instructions usually relayed as text are instead spoken.

The one issue here is that the VoiceOver voice lady also happens to tell you the name of the object in the square your finger is currently hovering over, which – in a game that’s supposedly reliant on identifying objects via sound and music rather than words – rather defeats the object a little.

Couple that with the ridiculous number of times the pop-up to rate the game rears its ugly head – and the difficulty you’ll have trying to get it to disappear – and it’s conceivable that some players could give up before they’ve properly started.

All of which would be a great shame, because underneath it all Stem Stumper is quite a clever little puzzler.

You play as Mimea, a vine plant who’s trying to reach fertiliser so she can keep growing. There are tree stumps which halt her progress, though she can use items like Angry Acorns or slingshots to remove them.

Both of these deplete a Flower Power meter, which is topped up by – you guessed it – picking up more fertiliser. You’re given a rating (in carrots) at the end of each level based on how few obstacles you destroyed to reach all the fertiliser bags.

With 100 levels excluding bonuses it’s fairly substantial, and if it’s a little too easy with graphics on once Sonar mode is activated and you’re reliant purely on the sound each different item makes, gauging the optimum route is surprisingly tricky.

It’s ironic that sighted gamers playing the blind mode will likely get the most out of the game, but nevertheless Stem Stumper is a noble attempt to include a group of players commonly ignored by the games industry, and a decent puzzler in its own right.