Puzzle Freak

Are you smarter than your friends?

Reviewed by Shawn from afro-ninja.com

Puzzle Freak is sort of like a mix between Monopoly and Mario Party. Up to four players can play at once (human or computer) as each competitor tries to make their way to the end of the game board.

In Puzzle Freak each turn you roll the die and try to make your way around the board, with each space you land on resulting in something different. Sometimes you get one of the random effects like ‘lose turn’ or ‘advance X spaces’ but usually landing on a space results in a minigame. Beat the minigame and roll again (up to three times), or lose, and stay where you are. The minigames are what make it fun, and there’s quite a few of them. As the title suggests, they are all puzzle-based as well. Most of them are based on existing concepts such as ‘spot the differences,’ ‘remember the cards,’ and ‘put a puzzle together.’ However them are some other variants like filling water jugs to specified amounts. Either way there’s a lot of them here, and honestly they’re almost all a balanced challenge. This of course depends on the person playing, but still. Each game has a time limit, and making a mistake in the game results in a time deduction. Each game can also be reset if you find yourself in trouble. I found some games easier than others, but that’s to be expected. I might hate lights out puzzles, but I know my friend can breeze through them with no problem.

Graphics are pretty solid, with cartoony characters and a nicely-drawn game board. The games themselves follow suit, but some of them seem a little out of place like the ‘guide the ship to the space station’ game with its pixilated-style graphics. The game features one sound loop that tends to get a little repetitive, but thankfully it can be turned off. You can turn off sfx individually as well.

All the games I played worked correctly, although I had some trouble with the puzzle piece game. You can rotate and move pieces around- but the rotation is manually done, so often when I tried to rotate a piece it would snap back to its original position, wasting time. My only other complaint is a lack of in-game instructions. It’s pretty easy to pick up on but when you see the game for the first time you might be a little confused on how it works. To be honest I still don’t know what all the marked spaces on the board mean, because I haven’t landed on them. I suppose that’s part of the mystery. There’s limited info on the game page itself (below the game window) but in-game instructions are always better, especially if the game gets passed to any other sites.

Puzzle Freak is a great game, especially with friends. It could have taken the easy way out and only included a few games, but there should be more than enough to entertain you. This is the type of flash game I’d like to see turned into an online-version. Also, a practice mode for the minigames might have been nice, as well as any other solo playing incentives. High scores are there though, so don’t worry. Get solving!

Click here to play Puzzle Freak






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