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Pirate Griddles
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Graphics & Sound:
I like PC-based puzzle games. They're great for quick entertainment while you're waiting on something or for hours of enjoyment when you get addicted. Pirate Griddles is a new puzzle game that will provide both quick and in-depth entertainment just depending on whichever you are in the mood for at the time.
Pirate Griddles does an excellent job of holding a pirate theme without being obnoxious about it. The color scheme seems to fit just perfectly and is pleasing to the eye. The background looks like a beach with the ocean behind it. You've got a parrot for a time keeper and an octopus to mark your squares with. Granted, a theme isn't really necessary for a puzzle game, but it makes it feel more complete and visually appealing.
My only complaint is 7's are a bit hard to read. Since they are the kind that have a line through the middle, they looked too much like the 4's to me, especially since the 7's are a light yellow and the 4's are a light green, so the colors look similar as well. There were several times that I messed up because I misread a 7 as a 4.
The background music sounds just like the white noise generators of the ocean. It isn't running all the time though. It's like the seagulls just chime in from time to time, so it's not distracting. You also get a sound when you put down an ink blot or an X and, most importantly, when you complete a row or column, it dings. This makes it so that you can quickly move to the next one without even looking. You don't need the sounds though, so if you want to listen to your own music, it won't hurt a bit. |
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Gameplay:
To start with, I should explain a griddle. In these griddles, you have a grid of a set size. At the top of each row and column are one or more numbers. These numbers tell you how many filled-in squares there are in that row or column. If there is more than one number, like 1 2, then that means there will be one square filled-in and then two squares together filled-in. Each group must have at least one blank square between them. The number will be listed in the right order, so 1 2 means that the one group will appear before the two group. The Tutorial will explain the instructions quite well with pictures, so I recommend that you go through it quickly.
On the Main Menu of Pirate Griddles are the choices of Free Play, Time Attack, Options, Tutorial, Quit, and a link to Social, which is Facebook. As I said before, start with the Tutorial just to know how to play the game. It is very quick and very descriptive. If you go ahead and choose Social, you can log into Facebook. On Facebook, you can share results or challenge a friend. The icon will add a green dot in the lower left corner of the icon, so that you can see you're logged in. It would be neat to get a prize or an award for Facebook or something when you solve all of the puzzles in a grid, but you don't.
After that, I moved on to Free Play just to start there. At first, you only have the option of 5x5. You can select a specific puzzle or you can click on random. As soon as you start the puzzle, the timer starts. You are given 60 minutes for each puzzle and while this might sound like a lot, you will find that sometimes it runs out quickly if you make mistakes. To unlock 10x10, you need to complete a 5x5. Two 10x10 will unlock you 15x15. Two 15x15 will unlock 20x20. There are fifty-four 5x5, thirty-two 10x10 puzzles, twenty-eight 15x15 puzzles, and thirty-six 20x20 puzzles available. That's a whole lot of griddles for you to solve! After you solve a puzzle, it will show you the actual picture of what you solved. They're cute little pics.
When you want a time challenge, select Time Attack. Here you will be given 60 minutes to solve as many puzzles as you can. Timed Attack throws random puzzles at you and will repeat eventually. Each time you solve a puzzle in timed mode, you will get three minutes added back to the timer. On the 5x5, you can pretty much play infinitely but that added time only goes so far on the bigger puzzle, especially if you had to guess a few times. Of course, since these are more of patterns than logic, if you have to guess, go with what looks like it would fit the pattern. |
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Difficulty:
On the whole, Pirate Griddles is an easy game to play, but can be difficult to master. The 5x5 are easy and are wonderful for getting you started and getting you used to the concept of the game. They usually take less than 20 seconds each. The puzzles really aren't in order by difficulty, so random won't be any more difficult. You can probably beat all the 5x5 in under an hour. I did so while on the phone. Once you get to the harder ones though, you'll find that they're not so quick or easy. Strategy wise, it's easiest to start with the high numbers first and learn which patterns will have only one way they can fit and fill those in as well. A lot of times, the rest will just fall into place. Unfortunately, they won't always and sometimes you simply have to guess a bit. When you guess wrong and try to ink a square that should be blank, a skull is placed in that square. Skulls will earn you penalty time. A wrong answer on a 5x5 will penalize you 10 minutes, 10x10 5 minutes, 15x15 2 and a half minutes, and 20x20 1 minute.
Pirate Griddles makes it easy in that when you've inked a row or column correctly, it automatically fills in blanks on the rest of the squares so that you don't have to X them out. This saves you so much time because you don't have to go in and fill in all those blanks yourself. Also when the row or column is done, the numbers are changed to a light blue, so you can tell at a glance that it is done. |
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Game Mechanics:
The controls are quite easy to learn in Pirate Griddles. You Left Click to fill with ink and Right Click to mark as blank. If you mark a square as blank, you will have to clear the blank before you can fill it with ink. This means that you can protect squares that you are sure are empty from accidentally inking them. You can highlight a row, just be careful that you drag the mouse very straight or you'll get the wrong squares and lose yourself a lot of time.
The one thing that I really missed was a pause button. At least as far as I can find, there is no way to pause your game. Considering some of the 20x20 puzzles can take quite a bit of time to solve, it would have been nice to be able to take a break. You can go back to the menu at any time, but that will reset your puzzle to its blank state.
Another thing to note is that originally I thought Pirate Griddles could only be played in full-screen mode. I found though that if you go into the Options, you can change Full-Screen Mode to off and then change Resolution to set the size of the window that it is in. You cannot dynamically resize the window, but you should be able to find a resolution for the window that works for you. It is quite handy to be able to bring it up and play a few minutes while you're waiting on something and then minimize it back again until you have more time.
Puzzle games are very common, so they've got to manage to have something special that keeps you coming back. I can't tell you exactly what makes Pirate Griddles so addictive, but I can tell you that I played for 4 hours straight because I just kept wanting to solve more. For me, that says a lot. If you're looking for a puzzle game that you won't get bored of quickly, try Pirate Griddles! |
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-Cyn, GameVortex Communications AKA Sara Earl |
Minimum System Requirements:
Hardware: Processor: 1.0GHz or faster, Graphics Card: Any card supporting DirectX 10, Shader Model 1.1 and at least 640x480 pixels screen resolution, Memory: At least 512MB RAM, Hard Disk Space: 512MB available HDD space, Sound: Direct X-compatible sound card
Software: Operative System: Windows 7 (x86 & x64) or Windows XP (x86) with Service Pack 3, DirectX(r): DirectX 10 or later, .NET: .NET Framework 4 or later, XNA: XNA 4.0 |
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Test System:
OS: Windows 7 SP1, Processor: 2.4 GHz, Memory: 4 GB, Hard Drive: 10 GB free, Graphics: 128 MB nVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M, Sound: DirectX 9.0c |
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