[i]Puzzle Pieces 4: Farewell Dear Winter[/i] is a jigsaw puzzle game developed by Graphium Studio and published by Denda Games. Normally, I'd go into the story premise, but as this game doesn't have one, I'll go straight into the gameplay.
Basically, [i]Puzzle Pieces 4[/i] has a collection of jigsaw puzzles that consist of pictures that are either winter or spring-themed. When you start up the game, you have five sets of puzzles (each set consisting of 33 puzzles) that are already unlocked, and you can do these puzzles in any order. In addition, there is a locked puzzle set. Now, in order to unlock this secret set, you need to collect sunbeams. How do you collect them? You can collect a random number of sunbeams when you start up the game each day. Also, as you complete a puzzle, depending on how quickly and challenging the puzzle, you'll earn a number of sunbeams. Collecting enough sunbeams will thaw the frozen locked set (consisting of 42 puzzles), giving the player an additional set of puzzles to complete. When you start a puzzle, you can choose how many pieces you want the puzzle to have, the puzzle shapes, etc. Thus, as the player, you can decide how challenging you want the puzzles to be. Also, there are hint buttons as well as an auto-solve feature. In addition, you can even upload customized pictures and make your own puzzles. That's the basic gameplay, and before I forget, at the time of this review, no Steam or in-game achievements are present.
Now that I've summarized the gameplay, I'll move onto my critique. As a child, I enjoyed playing jigsaw puzzles (the physical kind, of course XD) although it has been quite a while since I last played one. When the opportunity was presented to give this game a try, I couldn't resist, especially after taking a look at those beautiful game screenshots. First, I'll comment on the gameplay. I like how you can set the game difficulty with deciding the puzzle shapes, the number of puzzle pieces, etc. Since there is no option to choose a difficulty level, this is a great alternative. I found it relaxing to play through these puzzles and to just take my time getting through each one of them. I had no difficulties completing them, and I never had to use a hint button or such once. Also, I didn't encounter any technical difficulties although there's one aspect I should note. In the options area, you can choose between full screen and windowed mode. I chose to play on windowed mode since I tend to prefer to play games using it. However, windowed mode for my computer looked almost the same as full screen mode. I wasn't able to adjust the window size (unlike a lot of other games where I encountered similar issues), so I found this a bit annoying. It would be great to have a few windowed size options in case the player decides that they'd rather play using that mode.
In regards to the art, this is where the game shines. There's a variety of art in the puzzles although the majority are photographs. However, there are some more art pieces, and there are a lot of different subjects, ranging from animals to flowers and such. Also, there's a nice balance of winter and spring themes at play. Regarding the soundtrack, there are only a couple of tracks, so unfortunately, there isn't much variety. The tracks are calming and soothing to listen to, though, so they're perfect if you're in the mood to relax.
Overall, would I recommend [i]Puzzle Pieces 4: Farewell Dear Winter[/i]? If you like jigsaw puzzles, enjoy gazing at beautiful pictures, and don't mind the lack of achievements, then this is worth taking a look. (Oh, and before I forget, you can even download the jigsaw puzzles you complete as wallpapers.) For the asking price, I'd say it's just about worth it although you can always choose to wait for a sale. I had fun playing through the puzzles and found them to be relaxing. ^^
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