PUZZLE GAMES

A real corker here - and, despite the fact that it came out over two years ago (I think), in many people's opinion it's still the best puzzler to date. And, as is the case with most of these things, it's excruciatingly simple to play.

Basically lots of different-shaped bits fail from the top of the screen, and the idea of the game is for you to rotate these shapes as they fall so they all fit together neatly when they land at the bottom. Y'see, if the pile of blocks manages to reach the top of the screen you lose the game. But if you manage to twizzle them so they fit together neatly to form a solid row across the screen, then that row will disappear (thus making room for the rest of the failing blocks). Get me? (As with many of these games, it's a difficult concept to describe, but easy to understand once you see somebody playing it.)

And if you're thinking that this all seems incredibly boring and tedious, well, you're totally wrong. It's skill. In fact, it's completely and utterly addictive - almost too much so in fact. It'll have you tearing your hair out!
 

Okay, let's have a little 'puzzle' of our own here - you've got to try and guess what this game is all about from the title. Any ideas? Yes. that's right! It's about 'reflecting' things, isn't it? But reflecting what, you may well be asking (or perhaps not). Well, actually, lasers is what, sunshine. And here's the plot - guide your laser beam around the screen (with the use of reflecting mirrors of course) so that it destroys all the spherical objects littered about the place, and eventually removes the wall that blocks the receiver for the laser. Once you've done that, y'see, you can guide your beam back to the receiver which will then mean you can be whipped (oo-blinkin'-er) onto the next level, where you can do it all over again (providing you haven't overloaded your laser or run out of time on the way, that is). Phew!

Loads more things happen as well, but I can't really be bothered to explain because a) there isn't room and b) I haven't actually got very far (seeing as I'm crap at it). But never mind - it's different and it's fun-fun-fun all the way (well, sort of anyway).
 

A bit of an oldie this, but it's still quite good all the same.

(A few plays later.) In fact, I'd almost go as far as to say that I quite like it. But what's it all about, eh?

Well, it's kind of like those slidey puzzle games (where you must slide those plastic square bits around to make up a normally-crap piccy of Lassie or some such equally attractive persona), but with a few subtle changes to add to the fun. Firstly, you can collect the pieces one at a time, keeping them or temporarily chucking them out through a gap in the wall. Once you've got one you can't just put them where you want either - just like in the similar puzzles of the plastic kind, you have to slide them completely to one side or the other - if you see what I mean. And things get more complicated as you progress (Clive Sinclair really is a bummer to get together for instance) with things such as bombs (which blow everything up), holes in the wall (where pieces can fall out), bonuses which you can throw together (for extra score and lives) and a variety of other things which I, erm, can't quite remember, cluttering everything up. Still, it's actually not too bad at all.
 

If watching coloured blocks slide down a track, collecting them in this catcher thingy and dropping them into a container to make lots of pretty patterns is your bag, then Klax could be for you! Because, you see, that's exactly what happens here. (Spooky, eh?) Well, it's a bit more complicated than that to be honest, but that's the basic idea of things and that's what makes Klax an incredibly simple (but at the same time incredibly addictive) puzzler of the first degree!

Even though the basic idea is rather obviously based on Tetris, there're enough nice touches added here to give it a life of its own. Take the way the blocks (sort of) walk down the stairs for instance or the whopping great hand thingy which appears under the track every so often, for absolutely no reason at all (that I could work out anyway) except to look pretty. A corker.
 

This one's a bit on the weird side to say the least.

Basically it starts off with all these coloured balls simply floating about in space (some are on their own, others are connected together by elastic), and you're in there floating pathetically amongst them whilst in command of this little ship. Controls are of the Asteroids 'twizzle yourself around and fire to slow down or stop' type, and the screen wraps around on itself in a similar sort of a way as well (so, as you might expect, staying in control is always a bit of a fight).

The idea is for you to knock two balls of the same colour together and get them to disappear, otherwise they'll explode and you'll lose a life. If you knock two different coloured ones together by mistake a third one will appear. (Yikes!) Of course, there are squillions of different levels which get harder as you get better (if you see what I mean).

Graphics-wise, this one's a treat as the spheres rotate about and the elastic stretches to and fro. The two-player mode is pretty natty too - your two ships are tied together making things less than easy (i.e. hard). Yep - it's a bit weird, but brill all the same.
 

Pipes, eh? Yep, Spec-chums, that's what this one's all about.

Your task is to take pieces of pipe one at a time from this dispenser thing at the side of the screen (the pieces are lots of different shapes) and place them in a wiggly line around the screen, constantly extending your pipeline, so that when all this floozy red stuff starts flowing a few seconds later it can whoosh through the system you've created and won't make a big mess on the floor instead. As you might expect, graphics are of the crisp, clean and simple type but gameplay is such that this makes no difference at all. In later levels all sorts of complications make themselves known. Suffice to say it's quite good fun (if you, erm, like that sort of thing, that is).
 

An extremely popular game back in '87 - and it still looks good today. At first glance it looks uncannily like your standard arcade adventure, but play it a bit and you may (just) be able to squeeze a bit of a puzzle out of it. Hopefully anyway, 'cos we are meant to be in The Complete Guide To Puzzle Games. (This is one of those wobbly, borderline, six-hours-of-argument-in-the-office sort of games I was going on about at the beginning, I'm afraid.)

Right. The idea is to collect the key on each screen to allow you to get onto the next one. You do this by moving this little chap with a strange hat on around the screen - he can create blocks in certain places, and also disintegrate the ones he doesn't want. Graphics are cute city, and yet again it's another one of those 'just one more go' type games. A good 'un.
 

How would you feel if your best friend had just been turned into a ball? Precisely. And the last thing you would want is for him to roll down a pit or something, isn't it? So the best thing to do would be to walk about in front of him and build him a pathway by removing and placing blocks for him to roll along, yes? Okay, so everything looks rather like Solomon's Key to begin with, but begin playing and you'll soon realise that it's a completely different kettle of pickled herrings altogether.

For starters there's loads of icons and things which you can collect en route to help. And there's a natty two-player mode, which gives you a completely different set of screens which can only be completed if the two players co-operate with each other. Sheeks!

And as if all that wasn't reason enough to sellotape Spherical to your tape deck and leave it there, the game also features some particularly tasty graphics, packed with colour and jumbo-sized nasties to dispatch with a stream of carefully-aimed projectiles.

Another good 'un, proving that puzzles are where it's at.
 

Er, um, so okay - it's not really that much of a puzzle game, but I'm desperately running out of the things. So just pretend it's not here or something.

Anyway, The Sentinal, eh? I'm pretty sure (I wouldn't take my word for it, though) that it was the first solid 3D game on the Spectrum. And what happens is that you're this robot thingy, and there's this sentinal thingy way above you who turns around slowly. If he looks at you then you start dying, so you must climb up to his level by creating rocks and trees and things, and eventually absorb him. This may all sound very complicated, but once you've got into it, it really is lemon peasy and very enjoyable into the bargain, despite the large pauses during play which do tend to hinder things a bit.