A very cheap jigsaw puzzle game with some live 2d ecchi anime girls. Does it stand out among the sea of similar titles?
I can quickly answer the question above: yes it does stand out, especially considering the price. This is probably one of the most ambitious games of this type but it does have some flaws. 10 stages with 4 levels of difficulty. From silly easy one to the pretty challenging zen difficulty. Well, there are skills that can make everything too easy but if you try to play without using skills then you'll have more than enough playing time. The hours I've spent on this title are not idle hours! I've completed all zen modes without skills and had fun doing it while listening to podcasts in a background. I found this to be very relaxing as I enjoy jigsaws. For less patient ones there are skills I've mentioned already so you could have a choice.
You can level up one of four skills and buy items activating them from a shop. You won't have to 'farm' much to max them all but it it won't be a breeze either.
There is also a musical mini-game activated by 'golden jigsaws' which randomly appear somewhere after every few well placed pieces. Once you place such golden piece in the correct place on the puzzle you'll be able to activate speecial mini-game. It is a variation of rhythm games where you have to press a key (A, S or D) corresponding to one of the three 'rails' when a puzzle or skill reaches the bottom of your screen. This min-game helps to complete a picture and gives you golden puzzle piece required to unlock new stages and clothes options in the gallery.
Another positive is the art. Pretty good quality and very colourful anime style art. Moreover, all picture have some live 2d character animation + some background elements. This is a matter of preferences but for me it is a big positive. Developers displayed some creativity here as vast majority of such games are static. Overall design is pretty good as well.
Audio side of this game is also above average. You have some nice, relaxing music in the menu and ambient during stages. The musical mini-game offers several tracks from variety of genres. Some tracks were not my type but others were ok. Mixed bag here. You have a choice from three different tracks which are partly unique to every stage (there is some song overlap between consecutive stages) Also, every girl has some unique voiced lines on every stage, all in Japanese language.
Now let me talk about flaws. One is that puzzle pieces often lay outside of accessible screen, especially on zen stages. This is either a weird design choice or poor programming. Still, it is a bit annoying.
Another problem is with the musical mini-game. It is often bugged and does not work as intended. Pieces that suppose to reach the bottom of your screen disappear somewhere before reaching it making it impossible to complete the mini-game. Exiting and returning to the stage only sometimes fixes this issue. Sometimes it is enough to choose different song but exit-enter routine might still be required.
One more that happened to me were unresponsive puzzle pieces till I moved my screen. Once they were completely frozen in place and I had to restart the game and lose all progress.
Last thing is not a bug but still a frustrating flaw is the lack of reliable mid-progress saving. Zen mode is very time consuming without skills and while leaving a stage and returning to it preserves your progress, quitting the game is more than likely to reset it. I have no idea why once or twice it did save it but sure learned not to rely on this, and fast.
To summarise, for the asked price this game is way above average jigsaw titles offered on Steam. Good, animated art, skills system + a shop, buggy but interesting musical mini-game with several tracks, and ecchi anime girls with optional clothing. Despite some flaws I can easily recommend: 6.7/10
