Triga

Solving Triga's puzzles often feel like lining up dominoes just so to achieve the right chain reaction. It reminds me of the puzzle mode in Critter Crunch, where you have to visualize successive board states after minimal inputs. This isn't really my preferred mode of puzzling, but I still think Triga does a solid job. The puzzles sometimes get visually messy- more on that in a moment- but I was always able to work toward a solution with a bit of experimentation. It helps that many of the solutions are thoughtful or clever in some way, which is what matters in the end. That said, it is kind of a headache to initially parse some puzzles, especially later on as they take up more space, include more pre-set pieces, and give you more pieces to place yourself. What seems intended as the final puzzle gives you a whopping 18 pieces to place over a sprawling area with multiple elements. Personally I consider this complexity over depth, and not the right way to design a final puzzle. Other late-game puzzles are less egregious offenders, but it is a general issue for me. Compounding this issue is the fact that most puzzles take up only a small fraction of screen space in the center- for a standard desktop display, at least. The graphics could have been easily doubled in size, and there probably still would have been ample screen space left over except for maybe that final puzzle. Even were that a problem, perhaps some kind of camera pan or zoom could be implemented. It just seems like a waste of space, and a potential accessibility problem. A more minor note, but while Triga follows games like Stephen's Sausage Roll in not providing any explicit tutorial, I'm not sure the concepts came as naturally to me in this case. I felt like I was stumbling over basic rules for maybe the first third of the game, personally. Regardless, with secondary tasks and secrets in addition to the main puzzles, Triga feels like a complete package, and might be the most developed entry in the CosmOS 9 bundle. So long as you don't hate the domino-like puzzling style, it's probably worth a look.