I’ve never been great at multi-tasking in games. It’s why I daren’t approach a strategy game unless I’m sure no-one is around to hear me scream. Having to cope with managing two separate things at once at a competitive speed is usually a nightmare. For the most part however, Puzzlejuice for has been able to help me overcome my fear of multi-tasking.
The average strategy game has its two main components: building up your base while taking out the enemy. Puzzlejuice demonstrates this concept of simultaneous construction and destruction through blending Tetris and Boggle. Completed Tetris lines forms rows of letters, the letters are used to spell words to remove blocks. You’re builiding your own enemy, and what you create decides how you attack. You can build up a little bit at a time, sending in the odd short word to keep everything in control. Alternatively, you can create a grand base that will only be toppled by an attack of polysyllabic words. The former is the long game; whittling down the base to keep everything in control. The latter is the base rush; throwing in everything at once and hoping for an explosion or two.
The words attack the base. Three and four letter words do little to reduce to pile of blocks. Start sending in the larger words, however, and whole pieces of the wall are ripped down in one go. Fast playing also builds up your combo, and building this as highly as possible is the key to a good highscore. As the game picks up pace, special blocks become salvation, a lucky freeze or a well placed bomb can keep a combo going and keep everything under check. Keeping this combo going is the secret to a high score in Puzzlejuice; always doing little things to keep the combo in check until it reaches the hundreds and can no longer be handled. Maintaining the balance between a healthy puzzle board and a ticking combo meter becomes the larger strategy, lines must be filled and words completed constantly. At times this can become stressful and I found, in general, that this combo is ultimately halted due to the game’s controls being unable to keep up with the accelerating pace of the game.
To play Puzzlejuice as a casual game means the controls rarely become an issue. Everything is done with one finger; drag the tetraminos into place, swipe down to form lines, drag across letters to spell words. The start of the game gives the player plenty of time to let a block fall and try out various letter combinations until the longest word is found. Unfortunately, as the game speeds up this becomes a lot harder to do accurately. A mis-swipe can move a puzzle piece into a game-breaking position or a letter can be missed when spelling and prevent the 5-letter word explosion you were banking on. As I said, this is barely an issue when playing the game casually but shooting for a high score, which currently ranges in the billions, can become a test of patience as much as a test of skill.
If you don’t want to chase a high-score, Tiny Wingsstyle challenges are also included in the game that offer a different take on the game. Challenges such as reaching a certain speed level or spelling words without forming a row take the focus away from speed and towards planning out the perfect combo to reach the goals. These challenges quickly become something you can’t do incidentally through a normal game; they have to be considered with every move.
Chasing a high score moves the game away from my initial strategy analogy. Keeping up with the game’s pace while fighting the controls led to more of the StarCraft stress than the careful planning Puzzlejuice wants you to use. But chasing the challenges fits just right. A thought out strategy of when to build and what to destroy to meet certain criteria is where this game is best. It makes Tetris harder, Boggle serve a new purpose and has brought me one step closer to understanding how to multitask.