Anyone who knows me (there aren’t many) knows that I’m getting rather tired of physics-based puzzle games. Like zombie games, it seems to have become a game-developer rite of passage, especially for indie developers. It’s like they seem to think that the only way to make it in this industry is to feature the undead or semi-realistic physics. But then again, some of my favorite games feature at least one of these things. I’m not quite ready to say that Enigmo has completely water-boarded its way into my heart, but it sure is trying.
If you haven’t figured it out already, Enigmo is a physics-based puzzle game. The object of this particular game is direct drops of water from one place to another through the use of various objects that can be placed wherever your heart desires. It’s quite simple in theory, but it is actually one of the more challenging puzzle games I have played recently. But the great thing about it is that anyone can enjoy it because as long as you have enough patience, you will eventually make your way through each puzzle. You may end up with an awful score, but over time, you’ll come to accept that it doesn’t matter much in the long run anyway.
See, the way you score points is simply by completing each puzzle in the allotted time. As the timer runs down, so does your potential score. Once they both hit zero, you can no longer score any points, but you are more than welcome to continue trying to solve the puzzle. This is a piece of cake at first, but it wasn’t long before I was consistently completing puzzles without any score whatsoever. While it can be a tad disheartening, it’s never a deterrent because I was satisfied just by getting to move on. Nobody knows what my scores are anyway, so it’s not a big deal, although I do plan on going back to improve upon all of my previous solutions.
One of the things that makes this game a challenge is that you don’t always know what’s going to happen when you place an object. At first, you don’t even know what the objects themselves do until you’ve played around with them. I went through a few puzzles before finally discovering the use of one particular object; I had just been using it as a ramp instead of utilizing it for its true purpose. Once you’ve got that sorted out, you get to put everything into play in the hope that you will successfully guide all of the water droplets to into a big container. When enough have been contained—consecutively, not cumulatively—the puzzle will be completed and you may or may not be given your score.
The water droplets don’t move in a natural way; they move more like solid impermeable objects. As long as you can pretend that you’re not supposed to be dealing with actual water, the movement makes perfect sense and the “water” almost always bounces at the angles that you would expect in a normal environment. It is terribly important to use this to your advantage when trying to determine where the droplets will end up next so you can place your objects quickly and beat the clock. The controls take some getting used to, so you might have a bit of trouble with this at first, but you should be able to adapt fairly easy. Still, customizable controls would have been great.
While the game works as it should and is quite enjoyable, the sound of dripping water might drive you crazy, especially since it actually sounds more like a galloping horse. And to make matters worse, there is no background music to help set the mood or offset the sound effects. Audio cues aren’t used for this game, so you’re much better off muting it and playing some of your favorite music. Like most PSN Minis, Enigmo isn’t completely optimized for television, so playing on your PS3 will cause a bit of artifacting in the menus, but the in-game graphics look fine. On the PSP, everything looks great.
There are only 50 levels in Enigmo, which is somewhat disappointing, but it should still last you a good while because it offers a great level of difficulty. In some of the latter levels, when dealing with multiple water sources and switches, the puzzles can become quite elaborate, so you might even be thankful for the number of levels. It all depends on your preferences and skill level. For the most part, I think this will appeal to anyone. Unlike the PC and iPhone versions of the game, community-made levels are not available to play, which is terribly disappointing because that could easily add several more hours of gameplay. We can only hope that they will perhaps come at a later date. Until then, take comfort in knowing that Enigmo is still a solid game that just begs to be played and replayed.
Pros :- Challenging puzzles
- Still fun on subsequent replay
- Annoying sound effects
- No soundtrack
- Points are rather hard to come by
