AppReviewToday- AppReviews

You could skip this review of Dice Versa entirely and just play it. This puzzle game that dropped practically out of nowhere is available now on the App Store for free. There's no ads, no in-app purchases, and it's pretty enjoyable for what it is.

Dice with the devil

Dice Versa is a game where you have to match dice on a game board. Each dice has a number and color value assigned to it and the trick of the game is that you can't place dice next to each other that don't match in color and/or number. Once you fill a row or column of four dice, they clear off the board and add to your overall score, which is tallied for the leaderboards once you've run out of viable moves to make.

It's pretty similar to a lot of other matching puzzle games, but there are some key nuances to Dice Versa that help it stand out. Over time, your dice pool gets larger, as do the numbers and color variety of dice. There are also “wild” dice that can match with any number of dice and a combo system for chaining multiple matches together at once, clearing rows or columns with single numbers/colors, and more.

Pure chance

Outside of simply score climbing (and an initial tutorial), Dice Versa doesn't have much to offer. This may come as no surprise if you understand Dice Versa's origins. The game started as an entry in the Game Makers' Toolkit 2022 Game Jam, and thanks to its popularity and selection as one of the event's winners, it got polished up just enough to be released.

This is all to say that Dice Versa doesn't have some of the other trimmings you might expect from other mobile puzzle games. There aren't unlocks, cosmetics, achievements, or any other frills to keep you playing beyond the core matching systems themselves. Generally speaking, I prefer my puzzle games this way, though I know that seems to go against current design trends for creating successful mobile titles.

Rolling restarts

For all that is included in Dice Versa, the finished product is quite nice and user friendly. The game board helpfully highlights where you can make valid plays and explains when you get a score multiplier and what it is for. It also has some accessibility features like a colorblind mode, haptic feedback, and screen shake toggles that you can adjust to your liking.

While all of these features are great, I did find myself wanting two key features that are noticeably absent from Dice Versa. The first is a way to resume play sessions if you step away from a run or restart your phone. The other is some kind of alternate control scheme, as I found myself sometimes dragging dice to slots I didn't intend to drop them in, which a tap-based input method would likely prevent.

The bottom line

Dice Versa is a neat little puzzle game that is both easy to and well worth checking out. It isn't swimming in bells and whistles, but it also doesn't really need to, especially considering the asking price.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/dice-versa-review/

Puzzle games don't have to be complicated to be fun, but they do have to find a way to distinguish themselves from others. Railbound certainly looks nice and serves up some clever puzzles, but its train-based puzzling feels like a well-worn idea that doesn't get shaken up enough to make it feel more than simply competent.

Locomotive link-up

Railbound consists primarily of levels on a grid where your goal is to place railroad tracks so they provide a path for train cars to link up to a locomotive. Most levels begin with scattered pieces of rail already placed and immovable from their predefined locations while you have to fill in the gaps with a limited set of track pieces.

Once your path is set, you tap a button to watch the train cars go. If you mapped things out right, the cars connect to the engine and you chug off to the next level. If you are wrong, you get to watch how things go awry before resetting and trying a different track layout.

Tricky tracks

At the start of Railbound, the primary constraint on creating paths for your train cars is a limited amount of track pieces. The further you get in the game, more complicating factors start emerging like multiple train cars, tunnels, gates, switches, and more.

Each time one of these new features gets introduced, Railbound is pretty careful about rolling back the difficulty to let you learn how it works before layering previously explored mechanics back in. If at any point you get hung up on a particular challenge, you can often hop out of it and instead try a secondary level or even unlock all levels or toggle on a hint system in the game's settings.

One-track mind

Railbound has a ton of track-placing puzzling to offer and its levels are divided into different worlds that make good use of color and make the game look nice and varied. Its challenges are also pretty clever and contain more than the occasional stumper. Many times when playing, I had to take breaks so I could come back with a fresh perspective to tease out solutions.

This all sounds well and good, and for the most part it is, but all while playing Railbound I was also hoping and looking for something that would really open up the game's possibility space or add some more personality to its puzzling. There are some cute drawings of dogs who are the characters taking these trains on their journeys, but the glimpses we get of them are few and far between.

The bottom line

Railbound is a perfectly competent puzzle game. There's nothing wrong with that except for the fact that I could say that about a lot of other games on iOS as well. There are some unique things about this track-laying game, but they don't leave a lasting impression.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/railbound-review/