What can I say about this game other then its absolutely brilliant and refreshing.  This game has versions for Pc, Linux, Mac, Android and iOS.  Machinarium is not your typical adventure game at all.  I have been playing adventure games since 1992 and out of all the great games that I have played this one is in the top 3.  I would only put the first time I played Myst and Pandora Directive as better games.  Those are older games though.  Welcome to the new, out of the box thinking of adventure games from Indie projects.

Ok [Read More...]

Today, I have chosen to review another great design by Jean Claude Constantin. If you read my blog regularly, then you know I’m a big fan of his puzzles and I’m yet to find one that I don’t like. As of now, I have about 30 of his creations and from what I gathered, this number doesn’t account for more than 20% of all his designs. That says a lot about the sheer variety of puzzle ideas he came up with all these years.

The puzzle I have is called Nifty Fifty, and for those who [Read More...]

When I was younger I never really liked or understood how the Rubik’s Cube worked. I guess I still don’t understand it at all, but anyways. I now have an appreciation for the rotational puzzles. Looking at so many of them and seeing how they are made has given me an appreciation for them. I have even been able to solve the 3x3x3 and the 5x5x5. Of course it took me a long time but I still solved it.

This is something completely different.  The gear cube rotates on gears.  There is no internal mechanism that has pieces attached to [Read More...]

Arrow Command is a set of 120 maze puzzles. The Big Red Arrow must get to the red circle, while picking up stars along the way. You must place little red arrows to guide the Big Arrow home. We’ve seen this type of puzzle before. Galaxy Express comes to mind. Arrow Command has a few nice features: 1. Multiple colored arrows. The very easy levels have just one Big Red Arrow to get to its destination. Other levels have blue and green arrows that must get to their respective circles. 2. Wormholes: we’ve seen this before. 3. Toggling Arrows. Suppose 2 Big Green Arrows both [Read More...]

I have always been a fan of optical illusions.  In early 2011, I began working on an optical illusion art book project with puzzle writer Terry Stickels.  Our efforts eventually led to the publication of the book titled The Art of the Illusion:  Deceptions to Challenge the Eye and the Mind.  The book features a foreword from renowned puzzle creator, computer game designer, and artist Scott Kim and showcases more than 200 of the finest deceptive images from around the world.

The cover of the book features a beautiful painting from Canadian artist [Read More...]

Today I’m going to talk about a puzzle that in my opinion is very difficult.  It is rated a 10 out of 10 in difficulty.  This puzzle is called the Cast Quartet and is designed by Mineyuki Uyematsu.  He entered this puzzle in the 27th International Puzzle Party competition.  The objective of this puzzle is to take the four pieces apart and then put them back together.  The black metal finish looks cool and the puzzle has a solid construction.  This puzzle chewed me up and spit me out.  This puzzle is very hard.  I know this puzzle is solvable [Read More...]

The Karakuri Creation Group make some seriously incredible puzzle boxes, a few of which I have written about before. Many of them also come with a pretty hefty price tag to match their beautiful craftsmanship, however they do make a series of smaller than usual puzzle boxes that due to their size are also much cheaper.

They are all part of the Karakuri Small Box series which is made up of eight separate boxes, all of which have very different opening mechanisms despite their similar appearances. They all have unimaginative names, but at least it makes it easy [Read More...]