Puzzle Box

The hate for this game perplexes me. [LONG REVIEW DETECTED. PROCEED WITH CAUTION, TL;DR BELOW:] /// The two base modes are great, but the rest are a little unpolished. Don't buy this version of the game if you own a Nintendo Switch, buy Puzzle Box Maker on Switch instead. If you don't have a Switch, though, this game is worth it all the same. Let's talk about each mode the game has to offer; Classic mode has you scroll rightwards through a mural that's missing pieces. Using the mouse and/or WASD/Arrow keys, you need to drop each missing piece into the scrolling mural. Each color corresponds to a different WASD or arrow key, and one color is assigned to each M1 and M2 button; the colors assigned can be switched with the scroll wheel. This mode is fun, easy, intuitive and plays really well. It's polished, it feels good, it has very few issues aside from the mouse position being a little slippery at times. This can easily be fixed by lowering your DPI, though. Copycat mode is very similar to Classic mode, but the catch is that the mural is 100% incomplete, and you need to paint it in yourself. This mode also doesn't scroll, but you're judged based off accuracy and time, so you still need to work quickly. It controls the same as Classic though; WASD/Arrow Keys/Mouse to place colors, each piece needs to be dropped in before adding in the one above it. This mode is even better than Classic Mode, it may be even easier for some and I'd argue it's even more fun. After playing through enough levels in Copycat and Classic mode and collecting enough combo coins, you unlock new Action Modes that allow you to play through the murals in different ways. These modes are just as fun as Classic and Copycat on their own, but come with a few glaring issues; Claw mode has a number of polishing issues, but it's still pretty fun. You take control of a black Shadow Plättchen with a claw attached, your goal is to collect each of the six combo coins using the claw. Flying the claw into the coins will pick them up, and you can fly back to the entrance or opposite side of the level to access a portal. Pressing space in this area will collect the coin. There are ZeLeLis looking to stop you though, and flying into them will cause you to lose a life. Each life lost after the first will subtract one combo coin from your total after completing the level. The lack of polish comes into this mode with the claw itself. It gets stuck in the ground pretty easily, and constantly catches of ledges and corners. This isn't hard to get around, but it slows you down and interrupts the flow of the game quite a bit. If you're able to disregard that, though, this mode is still fun. Run Mode is the most polished Action mode in my opinion, also being arguably the most fun mode in the game. You take control of Roy the Running Marshmallow in an autorunner, running away from a giant shadow pillar and collecting combo coins. By clicking or pressing space, Roy will jump. Once airborne, you can jump up to three extra times, meaning you have access to a quadruple jump. Not every mural works well with this mode though, some have spots that are easy to die or get softlocked in, but I would argue that these just add to the challenge and make it more interesting. Boom Mode is my personal favorite mode, even though it is a little janky. You drop black Shadow Plättchen into a mural in an attempt to blow it to smithereens using only three Plättchen. The jank comes in with exactly how the destruction is calculated. In order to win all 10 Combo Coins, you need a 100% destruction score, but most of the time it's impossible to reach above 80%. The game seems to have a failsafe for this though; I've observed that destroying 75% of a mural will cause the game to destroy the rest of it for you, so in reality, you only need to reach about 75% destruction to win. This mode is really fun if you can calculate the perfect placement for each Plättchen, and the satisfaction of destroying everything is just so cathartic. And finally there's Kubi Mode. You take control of my favorite cubic video game hero, Kubi, on a quest to collect 21 Pixel Flies AND feed your dog, Pixo. There are obstacles here though, the evil Shadow Men will kill you and your dog upon contact. You can respawn, but your dog cannot. If you can collect 21 Pixel Flies, however, you become invincible, and coming into contact with Shadow Men will kill [i]them[/i] instead. This makes it really easy to feed Pixo, and taking a fed Pixo to the exit with all 21 Pixel Flies collected will grant you 10 combo coins for completion. This mode is fun, but it is by far the least polished. It doesn't control all too well, pressing S/Down Arrow to initiate a Super Jump will also drop Pixo. This makes it easy to let him down instead of throwing him, but also makes it impossible to Super Jump while holding him. The Pixel Flies are also supposed to spawn bombs after collecting enough of them, but most of the time the bombs just... don't spawn. Those issues aside, though, this mode isn't half bad. Looking past the gameplay, let's talk about the art direction and soundtrack; it's good. Yeah. That's it. It's good. The soundtrack has a lot of relaxing music for Copycat and Classic mode, and a number of tracks that are more intense to fit the other ones. The pixel art all looks nice, and the backgrounds and decoration of each level looks incredible. But here's the kicker; this game has since had a sequel made for it. Puzzle Box Maker released on Nintendo Switch in 2017, and was updated to have even more content and polish in 2020. For an extra five dollars, you get a game that's much more polished polished than this one, controls better, AND has a full-on Maker Mode so you can create and play your own murals, not to mention the ability to share your own content with the world. Puzzle Box Maker is far better and more fleshed-out than this game is, and for that reason I would recommend it more. So to cut a lengthy review short, this game is good in its own right, but there's a newer version that I would recommend more. If you don't have a Nintendo Switch or prefer PC that much more, I'll still tell you to get this game, but if you DO have one, it's honestly worth it to fork over the extra five bucks for an even better experience.

It was ok...

This is the kind of game that goes on my list to vary the menu. there will be days that I will not in order to destroy things. This puzzle is very relaxing. Just breathe and play.

Cute game for kids & those who like to make relaxing colourful pictures. (50% of the main levels have auto-scrolling, but it's slow enough to usually not be a challenge, unless you speed it up yourself) Also has timers (which count UP), so you can see how long each level took you to beat & challenge yourself to complete it faster next time, while retaining the same degree of accuracy. Puzzle is a misnomer, though - something like Colour Box, would be a more appropriate name.

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Puzzle Box is a game for young children, make no mistake about that. It was developed with simplicity in mind. However, the imprecise controls tend to ruin this simplicity by creating a frustrating experience where the only challenge is fighting the controls hoping they'll do what you want. Below, I'll go over each mode and describe them and how the controls have failed me in each one. Classic Mode: In this mode, you're placing colored blocks as the screen scroll along, and you have to match the colors with the layout. The concept is simple enough, but the problem arises when the mouse cursor doesn't scroll along with the screen. On more than one occasion, I've meant to place a block in one column, but the mouse cursor, staying still, moved to the next cloumn when I didn't intend it to. This is frustrating because it penalizes the player for not keeping this mouse cursor scrolling along with the screen, somethign that should be done automatically. There are also two methods for choosing colors. You can either use WASD to choose up to four different ones, or use the mouse wheel to swap between sets of two. both methods work well enough, however, I do wish the mouse wheel would only rotate the colors 1 section instead of 2 sections at a time, because there are moments where you want to quickly place two colors that are on opposite sides of the color selector, and with the current setup you have to place, scroll, place, scroll, place, scroll, and it's not quick enough to be reliable. Also, the whole thing seems like it would control much better with gamepad support, but the game doesn't appear to support this whatsoever. Copycat Mode: In this mode there's a layout on a static screen, and you have to place the correct colored blocks. If you make a mistake, it doesn't end the game, just affects you score at the end. My main complaint with this mode is the same as above with the color selector. In this mode, speed isn't really a factor, but using the mouse wheel to switch between colors makes the mode more tedious than it already is. However, even if the color selector was better, this mode would still feel too tedious to be any fun. Boom Mode: In this mode, you take one of the layouts you made in copycat mode and drop a set number of bombs on it, in an attempt to destroy all of the blocks. This mode is not very difficult and ends up just being boring and not challenging whatsoever. I guess the idea is that very young kids might like watching the level explode, but the explosions don't even look very impressive, and the whole thing just comes off as bland and unexciting. Kubi Mode: In this mode you control a little red square with a face, and the layout you made in copycat mode is turned into a platforming stage, with some extra platforms added in around the sides, and some fairies and other things to collect. The platforming controls are not very good, and this mode has one of the floatiest jumps I've ever had the displeasure of exeriencing in a platformer. The mode is also pretty easy, and has definitely been tuned for very young children. You have something like a triple or quadruple jump available, so there's literally zero challenge on the platforming side of things. There are enemies to avoid, but they travel in a set pattern on a loop and never end up chasing the player, so avoiding them is a simple task. The layouts also don't end up making very interesting levels, and the extra platforms on the sides are always the same, so things get a tad repetitive, as well. Run Mode: In this mode, you take the layout you made in Classic Mode, and run through it as a character named Roy, being chased by some black goo, and collecting 10 coins along the way. The controls, like Kubi Mode, don't feel very great, with a somewhat floaty jump, and left & right movement that feels rigid with no momentum whatsoever. Once again, the difficulty is tuned for very young children as well. You have a full 5 jumps that you can use before having to land on solid ground again, which makes it incredibly easy to avoid obstacles and collect all of the coins. Despite this, there is a "Round 2" on every stage, where you go through the stage a second time, in order to collect any coins you may have missed. The game forces you to play through this second round, even if you've already collected all of the coins in round 1 (which is super simple, so it's very likely that you would have done so). This makes the round 2 section feel entirely pointless and a waste of time, since it doesn't allow you to collect more than 10 coins, so all you're doing is running through the same stage you just ran through for no reason. Claw Mode: In this mode, you control a hovercraft with a claw attached to it. You're tasked with using the claw to pick up coins and take them to one of two zones on the side of the layout you created in Classic Mode, all while dodging obstacles. The controls in this mode are the worst of all. Where the other modes had controls that felt stiff and rigid, the controls for the hovercraft feel more based around the physics engine, making it very unweildy. This caused me to run into the obstacles and die a lot, and sometimes when I respawned I would spawn on top of an obstacle, causing me to die again immediately, without any chance to avoid it. Another thing is, when you would retrieve a coin and bring it to the drop-off zone, there's no way to release the coin, and it's very finnicky getting the game to register that you've successfully took the coin to the drop-off zone. Easily the worst mode out of all of them. Overall, the game is simple in it's design, as it was made for children. I could accept this if the rest of the game was good. However, this simplicity also seems to have carried over to the programming, making it an unweildy mess to control. It feels like the developers didn't put very much care into how the game plays, and the graphics, while servicable, are also not very impressive or nice to look at. The game feels like it was created on a very small budget, and it really shows by the lack of care that has gone into it. The concept is nice, but in terms of both fun, and execution of this concept, it completely fails, and I would say there are many much better options out there for puzzle games and platforming games. There really isn't any reason to play this one.

I am 32 years old. My ex-wife and I have a daughter together, and we adopted our son together. Both are now 4 years old. When we were going through our separation, I felt lost and unhappy. I was self-destructive. One day, I was so angry with everything spiraling out of control that I punched a concrete wall in a moment of overwhelming emotion. This resulted in breaking my fifth metacarpal in my right hand—the hand I worked with, played games with, and used to carry my children to bed—the hand I desperately needed to ensure I could continue providing. Upon learning the severity of the self-inflicted damage, I became almost suicidal. Keep in mind that just a few months before this, I was the happiest man, with no history of depression or anxiety. I had never experienced anger outbursts, nor was I the type to break down and cry, but I was in a tough situation that truly prevented me from seeing the light on the other side. With nothing better to do, I looked for a game I could play WITH ONE HAND while recovering. Somehow, I stumbled upon this game and read some of the comments. I decided it was worth a try... I must admit I didn't beat the game, nor did I play as much as some of you. In fact, I may have played this game for only a day or two. That being said, after doing so, I had a new joy and hope for life. I managed to leave behind the pain and suffering that had been thrust upon me. I could experience the joy and happiness of other people. I relaxed for 5 ♥♥♥♥ minutes listening to this music, long enough to realize that I would be okay. After realizing this, I turned off the game and went back to work. My hand hurt a lot, but I was motivated. I stopped feeling so sorry for myself and became the father I needed to be at that moment, not the weak boy I was behaving like. Today, I am close friends with the mother of my children. We don't fight, argue, or say hurtful things to each other. We are parents and friends. Now I have 3 children. My third child is, wait, ALSO 4 YEARS OLD. The woman I am with was going through a very similar situation at the time of my separation, and we just unexpectedly stumbled into each other's lives. We have been dating for a year and are very happy together. Moral of the story: you never know what life has in store for you, and if I had given up when all odds were against me, I wouldn't be where I am today. This silly little game helped me realize that. Thank you.

Si vous voyez le message comme quoi le Français n'est pas disponible pour ce jeu, je vous rassure, ce n'est pas grave, Puzzle Box est tellement intuitif qu'il n'y a pas besoin de connaître la langue du jeu. C'est un bon jeu que je recommande à tout le monde. On s'amuse très bien avec sans se prendre la tête et ça, ça compte !