No more missing pieces

Continuing my "games with Puzzle in the title" start to the year, the second XBLA game that I completed in January was Puzzle Arcade. This is a jigsaw puzzle game (the reason that "jigsaw" doesn't appear in the title is that it is not used to describe this sort of puzzle outside of the English-speaking world) that I signed for Eidos in 2006. The original design (then called "Fractal Jigsaw") came from Say Design in California and the 'heavy lifting' was done by CTXM in Latvia.


The thinking behind the project was to find a universally understood casual gaming concept that could support multiplayer play and hopefully emulate the huge success of Uno on the platform. Jigsaws are enjoyed all around the world and an electronic version offers big advantages over the traditional form - you don't have to worry about losing pieces, it doesn't take up your dining table for days at a time, you can work on many puzzles at once, you can get assistance if you are stuck and you can attempt puzzles that would be too large to complete in your house. The original design envisaged a massively mutliplayer element to the game; hundreds of players would be able to collaborate to complete enormous puzzles, much bigger than the largest real-world puzzles, of perhaps even millions of pieces. These larger puzzles would be split down with each piece being made up of smaller pieces, and those smaller pieces being likewise divided, hence the 'fractal' part of the title.

Unfortunately, the server backend requirements for this feature stopped it being cost-effective and the massively multiplayer feature was cut (the fractal puzzles remain). However, the finished game is still a fun collection of jigsaws with a good variety of single and multiplayer modes and while it is not going to review highly due to the type of game it is, it is good to see that many people who have played it really enjoyed it. As for me, I've beaten the challenge mode but I'm going to need to put a lot of time aside to get the 'Kilopiece Colossus' achievement for completing a 1000-piece puzzle.


If you own an Xbox 360 connected to the internet and you've not played Puzzle Arcade yet, I have got five unlock codes for the full game that I am giving away to the first five random internet denizens who read this and drop me an email. Email blog at unfriendlyghost.com with the subject line "Puzzle Arcade competition".