Parent Panel Review - Puzzler World 2011 game for Nintendo DS

Product: Puzzler World 2011 game for NDS

Price: around £20

Available from: Amazon, Asda etc

Suitable from: Age 3+

Initial Reaction: Good - familiar brand (also produces Puzzler books)

Pros:

·         Simple to use, fairly intuitive controls.

·         Over 1200 brand new puzzles

·         Has the old favourites like Wordsearch, Crossword and Sudoku but also FitWord, BackWords and PieceWords which are great fun and pretty addictive.

·         Good for brain exercise

·         Introduced me to some new fab puzzles that would only work on a console and stylus format.

·         Challenging, fun puzzles against the clock to put the pressure on..

·         When you complete a puzzle you get an additional quick puzzle to do. There are quick games such as hangman, sum up, add up and splitwords. If you complete this you “spin the wheel” to win “hint” points that you can use to help solve puzzles. Spinning the wheel is great fun in itself.

·         Games get harder as you progress through them so you don’t get bored. Has tougher puzzle in the Masters Mode, which you unlock as you progress.

Cons:

·         Can only save 1 unfinished puzzle at a time (overwrites previously saved puzzles) but that isn’t a major problem, particularly if you are good!

·         There aren’t any answers! Again, not a problem for most but if you get really stuck and haven’t got any hint coins left you can’t get any further. There are ways of cheating by redoing bonus puzzles you already know the answers to as you get another spin of the wheel!

·         Personally couldn’t get on with all the puzzles e.g. Link-a-pix and Silhouette didn’t make much sense to me. This isn’t really a Con as sure others would love these.

Value for money? Yes for puzzle fans it is great.

Overall Reaction: Personally found it very addictive and kept me amused for hours. It is a brilliantly clever idea and is bound to be successful particularly with the holiday season coming up, it would be great to play on a long flight or on the beach as an alternative to a holiday read. Although it is for 3+ years I didn't try it out on my 4 year old who is just mastering the basics of phonics.

By Louise