2Puzzle It: Fantasy Review (DSiWare)

DSiWare's already got way too many Sudoku games, so it's a nice sight when a developer releases a puzzle game that isn't something done to death already. The service has yet to get one traditional sliding puzzle game, so we had at least some hope for this first effort.

Likely to be the first in a series, 2Puzzle It: Fantasy is, surprisingly, not a sliding puzzle game in the same way most people know them – you're not moving around squares with the use of one empty space in order to form a correct image. There are three different game modes instead; the default is more like a Rubik's Cube in that you can only move entire columns or rows.

Another, and probably the easiest, lets you swap any two pieces around as you wish. The final mode only lets you swap pieces adjacent to each other, which is the closest to the traditional way.

There are 15 puzzles altogether, each of which can be played with any of the three modes, although you only start with about five. The rest must, similarly to another DSiWare puzzle game, be unlocked by playing the others to earn jewels, which can then be spent to unlock the remaining puzzles one at a time.

In between just about everything, the game is hampered by some noticeable loading times – even going between different menus causes a loading icon to pop up, which takes several seconds to go away. Everything else is noticeably laggy as well – stuff animates rather haphazardly and you get the feeling that the game is almost trying its best to run without freezing.

As the title implies, the game has a fantasy theme, so all the puzzles are themed after dragons, elves and the like. They're all drawn by hand but don't look particularly high quality. The music is your typical average puzzler music, nothing memorable and barely even noticeable.

Aside from trying to beat your best times and unlocking the remaining puzzles, the game really doesn't offer you any replay value, and it's a bit disappointing that the sliding puzzle game everybody is familiar with isn't actually included in the package.