eldorado puzzle

Eldorado Puzzle belongs to a group of games that I causally refer to as girlfriend games, you know, those type of games that girlfriends usually like and play a lot. It reminds me a bit of Dynomit although the game mechanics are different. You do however collect parts of ancient artifacts throughout the game.

The game is available for free download at the developers homepage. I find it a bit surprising that such a high quality game is not a commercial game. Graphics, game play and motivation are top notch and on pair with games like Dynomite.

It combines an addictive gameplay with enough variation to keep the player playing without boring him to death after a while. Game modes are mixed throughout the levels and the first few contain introductions of various game elements.

eldorado puzzle

All evolve from the same basic concept though. The task of the player is to gather the artifacts that are hidden in the levels. The game board itself is made up of squares that contain various symbols. When those symbols are connected to the same type they vanish and everything on top falls down to fill the gaps.

One of the most common game modes is to remove symbols from every square of the game board at least once and most of the other modes make use of this basic mode as well.

A variety of this topic is to guide one or two avatars on a path on the game board so that they can reach a certain destination which is usually a switch of some sort. Add keys, doors, dynamite, fire and several other items to the mix and you got a pretty solid understanding of the game.

It’s a time based game which is not a huge problem in the first levels. It is starting to get a bit more complicated from level 4 on which is usually caused by board layouts that are more difficulty to play with

Totem Destroyer reminds me a little bit of the excellent Nintendo Wii game Boom Blox. In it the player has to destroy a certain number of blocks that hold a golden totem on the top. The difficulty of the game comes from the rule that the totem cannot hit the ground. If it does it is game over and the player has to try the map again.

The game consists of 25 levels and only three different types of blocks. This is enough to create an interesting addictive puzzle game though.

Totem Destroyer is solely played with the mouse. The player can use the left mouse button to destroy one brick at a time. It takes a while before he can use that function again and gravity takes it toll in the meantime.

Interesting game albeit a little bit short. The game saves the progress and the player can continue where he left of.

Remember the game Marble Madness? It was an arcade game by Atari back in 1984 that made use of the trackball controller to move marbles through an isometric labyrinth. One of my favorite games for the Nintendo Wii, Super Monkey Ball Banana Blizz, is making use of many of the elements that have been introduced by the godfather of the move ball through labyrinth game.

Trackballs is a free version of Marble Madness that sports the old and many more new levels for everyone’s entertainment. The game features currently over 70 tracks and additional tracks can be downloaded from the game’s website.

Executables are available for Linux and Windows. The player moves the marble with the arrow keys and has to reach the level exit before the time runs out. The difficulty of the game lies solely in the game layout with tiny passages, drops and ramps plus enemies that make the life of the player miserable.

The game is definitely fun to play and offers nice graphics. Does not have to be installed in Windows and can be played right from the location it was unpacked to.

I’m not sure why this game is called Chat Noir and not Cat Noir but maybe I don’t get it. It’s a very simple puzzle game where the player has to prevent that the cat is leaving the game board by placing dark rings on the board that the cat cannot pass.

And that’s it. It took a while before I was able to discover the right strategy to beat that damn cat that seemed to be always one step ahead of my tries to block its path and I still win only about 20% of the games no matter what I do.

There is probably a better strategy. Have not figured out yet if the direction the cat takes is random or not. If you find it out let me know.