Top 10 iPhone puzzle games
July 30, 2009 by dragon
The puzzler is one of the most popular genres on iPhone, so we've compiled a list of the ten best puzzlers on the App Store to help you sift through the hundreds available
With its natural casual gaming connections – brought up by the fact that, much as us iPhone gamers might like to think it is, the iPhone isn’t primarily a gaming device – it's no surprise that there are a lot of great puzzle games on the iPhone. In fact, there are so many that constructing a Top 10 list was particularly difficult. So difficult in fact that we’ve denied a few types of puzzler games from the list. We’ve left out word games here, as there are enough wordy corkers on iPhone for a separate Top 10 list. Plus, there are no serve ‘em up games or anything with too much of an adventure lilt. These factors aside, this is the definitive list of the Top 10 Know Your Mobile puzzlers, at least until some more great titles turn up! Tanzen Although it’s bargain-priced, Tanzen offers hours of gameplay, featuring more than 400 separate puzzles. Devilishly challenging aspect aside, it’s also quite relaxing to play, making it perfect to while away the minutes or hours. It has more awards to its name than you can shake an iPhone charge cable at, including plaudits from non-gaming institutions like CNN and ABC news. It’s one of the iPhone’s few ‘must have’ apps, so if you don’t have it, get it! Theseus The feature that elevates Theseus above a simple maze game is your ability to reverse time. A button on the main game screen lets you scroll back a move, allowing you to obsess about the solution to a puzzle without having to start from scratch if you get caught. Edge Enigmo What Enigmo lacks in puzzle purity, it makes up for in sheer ingenuity. Plus, you can download level packs designed by other users, meaning that the game offers hundreds of levels beyond what the developer came up with. Some of them are fantastic too! Tower Bloxx Deluxe If you don’t get them dead on, your tower will start swaying. Keep on placing the blocks off centre, and your tower might just fall down completely. It’s frustrating at times, but its addictive quality sweeps over everything else, leaving you a gibbering, tower-building wreck of a person. Tiki Towers The premise is simple – you need to get a troupe of monkeys from one end of the level to the other, using bamboo sticks to build intricate structures for them to swing along. It’s a little toned down in difficulty terms compared with some similar games that have been released on PC, but it’s consistently a joy to play. Brain Challenge Just as with all good brain training games, you can track your progress with a series of official looking graphs and marvel at what a genius you are. Bejeweled 2 Zen Bound It’s an absolute must-have though, with fantastic visuals, physics and a truly relaxing vibe. -Andrew Williams of knowyourmobile.com
By Little White Bear Studios
Price 59p
Tangram puzzles, where you have to fill a shape with a handful of other jagged objects, work well on iPhone as they can make great use of the touchscreen. You need to twist and turn each of the shapes, like an advanced zen-infused jigsaw puzzle in order to get everything to fit as it should.
Trism
By Demiforce
Price £1.79
Trism was one of the App Store’s original innovative games. In many ways, it’s also familiar as it’s a colour-matching game. The main difference with Trism though is that you use the tilt controls as well as your finger. If there’s a gap in the game grid, the triangles fall as you’d imagine they would in the real world- according to gravity.
By Jason Fieldman
Price 59p (promotional price)
A game that’s deceptively good considering its plain-looking visuals, Theseus has more than its fair share of genius game elements. From afar, it seems very simple. All you have to do is escape from a maze without getting caught by the Minotaur. You take it in turns with the mythical beast to move, making Theseus not entirely unlike a game of chess.
By Mobigame
£2.99
This block-pushing game has heaps of style and has picked up awards at videogame festivals across Europe. Simple but ingenious touchscreen controls make the most of Edge’s cunning level design. All you have to do is collect mini cubes and find the exit to each level, but the visual style and sheer quality of the levels push Edge up to the standards of the very top puzzlers.
By Pangea Software
£1.79
Enigmo plays physics games with your mind. In it, you have to get droplets of water from one end of the level to the other using a variety of springs, deflectors and propellers. The quicker sort out a path to the exit, the more points you’ll win.
By Digital Chocolate
£1.79
One of Digital Chocolate’s classic mobile titles, the iPhone version of Tower Bloxx retains the original gameplay but spruces-up the visuals to fit the iPhone’s capabiltities. In it, you build a city by making buildings, constructing them one-by-one by dropping blocks from above.
By Real Networks
59p
Tropical Towers, Tiki Towers’ alter ego, won an IMGA award this year as best casual game, and with good reason too. It makes staggeringly good use of real-world physics to produce a world-class bridge building game.
By Gameloft
£2.99
Generally considered to be the best brain training game on the iPhone, Brain Challenge is highly polished and great fun. It features a whopping 43 mini-games split into sections designed to focus on a certain type of thinking- whether maths, memory or perceptual acuity.
By EA
£1.79
Bejeweled 2 is one of the original ‘match 3’ puzzlers that started such a craze on mobile. It’s just as fresh to play now, and the iPhone version brings ultra crisp visuals to this classic format. Not much has changed in the transition to the App Store, but thenn what more could you want. Bejeweled 2 was one of the best match 3 puzzlers before it came to the iPhone, and now it’s one of the best on iPhone
By Chillingo
£2.99
As the title indicates, Zen Bound is almost certainly the iPhone’s most zen-like game. You wrap a rope around an object, trying to cover as much of the object’s surface as possible. It has such a mystical vibe that some argue it’s not really a game at all, more of an experience to be met with the clinking of tiny cymbals.
You might want to check out Tuzzle. The goal is to find the right combination of moves to bring a block on the goal tile. The graphics are not that impressive but the levels are very challenging.
Block Drop is another great puzzle game for the iPhone. It features photo-realistic 3D graphics and a soothing music soundtrack. It also has 999 levels!
http://BlockDrop.com/c/BlockDropiPhone/
Block Drop Lite has just been released and can be downloaded for free:
http://BlockDrop.com/c/BlockDropLiteiPhone/