No incremental games for once, just casual puzzlers! A bit of logic, a bit of words, a bit of timing.

#1: Railbound

Railbound is a simple logic puzzle concept with a train track-laying aesthetic, from the developers of Golf Peaks and inbento. It’s tricky!

Screenshots

All screenshots are from version 4.03:

Level select Puzzle 2-6A Puzzle 3-5
Railbound level select Railbound puzzle 2-6A Railbound puzzle 3-5

Review

The first few levels of Railbound are misleading. Lay some track connecting a train cart to the train’s engine, how could this ever get tricky!? Well, tunnels, junctions, multiple carts, signals, and much more quickly complicate things.

Each level has a limited number of track tiles to lay, and there’s no energy / cost to trying out new ideas. As such, you’re just left to solve the puzzle with no distractions, with a lot of complexity coming from no manual control over the cars, and their requirement to arrive in order. Ideal setup for a puzzle game!

I’m around 30-40 levels in, finishing up world 3 of 13, and I’m consistently impressed with the challenging yet possible design of every single puzzle. It’s very rare that a puzzle game does such a good job of drip-feeding new ideas and techniques without any words, and instead relies on you experimenting and building upon your own knowledge.

Additionally, the game has a “core” path of mandatory levels, but at least as many bonus levels too, any of which can be played after completing the corresponding core level. There’s no incentive or benefit to solving these puzzles, but it’s a great way to reinforce the lessons learned, and solve significantly trickier problems.

For example, Puzzle 2-6A (picture above) appears simple when the non-movable tiles are initially shown (tiles with thick brown wood): just send car 1 through the red tunnel, then route car 2 through the same tunnel to follow afterwards. Except, huh, you’ve got one tile too few to do this, no matter how cleverly you lay the track. I got stuck here for a while, until I eventually solved it through trial-and-error, and the solution may not be obvious even if you see it!

The solution is to let car 1 go through the red tunnel to the engine, easy. Meanwhile, car 2 needs to go through the blue tunnel, into the red tunnel, follow the looped track, then back through the red tunnel to the engine. When I figured this out I felt very proud, pressed play, and my 2 cars promptly crashed in the post-tunnel junction. The solution? A tactical wiggle for car 2 to ensure it arrives at the junction a little later!

This example should highlight how a well-designed simple puzzle can be deeply engaging to solve, and this is reinforced by the overall player-friendliness of the game. In addition to the expected audio & language controls, there are:

  • Quality settings (all seem identical to me, it’s a stylised game!)
  • Game UI scaling
  • Option to unlock all levels
  • Option to enable a hint system
  • Option to turn on colourblind assistance (e.g. icons for paired tunnels)
  • Option to reduce motion effects

Monetisation

Included in Google Play Pass, or £4.29 (~$6).

Tips

  • You’ll definitely get stuck on puzzles, I find completely clearing all tiles and trying something that won’t work helps me get to the solution.
  • You can increase train speed during playback, you might as well use max speed as you can’t edit anything whilst the cars are moving.
  • The game is also available (and well reviewed!) on Steam, where it seems to include a level creator.
  • There is a Discord server for the game.

#2: String of Words

Are you a fan of 2-word phrases? Then this is the game for you!

Screenshots

All screenshots are from version 1.5.9:

Level select Mid-level End of level
String of Words level select String of Words mid level String of Words end of level

Review

This is not a complex game, nor one that works particularly well either on or off Google Play Pass. You’ll start with a word, and a clue, and need to guess the follow-up word. For example, “One _”, clue “Pirate’s handicap”, answer is “leg”. Easy.

“Leg” then becomes the first word for the next clue, and you’ll chain these answers together until you get to the target word. That’s really all there is to it.

There’s a “Daily Mini” where only 1 word needs to be guessed, however each puzzle won’t take more than a minute or two so is pretty “mini” to begin with! The game includes 10x basic achievements for completing each “book” of puzzle, and completing 30 daily puzzles in a row or 100 total.

This relatively simple game wouldn’t be review-worthy if it wasn’t for one thing: The sheer number of puzzles. Each puzzle (consisting of 7 clues) is bundled with 4 others into a “Chapter”. There are then 40 chapters in a book, and 8 books, giving a total of… 1600 puzzles, and 12,800 clues. I can only assume these were generated somehow, since I’m not sure a human could create this many!

The puzzles unfortunately suffer from being quite USA-centric in some of the references and phrases, much more so than other word games I’ve played, meaning I’ll find around 1 answer per 2-3 puzzles that I just don’t know.

Monetisation

String of Words does not seem well monetised. I played it on Google Play Pass, where there’s a free chest of coins (used to provide solution letters) every 30 minutes… and infinite coins by just tapping “+”! This means every puzzle can be solved by spam pressing the “Hint” button with no downside whatsoever, undermining any effort taken to solve it properly.

I suspect this is due to the monetisation when not playing on Play Pass, where you’ll presumably need to watch adverts or pay to gain coins for hints.

Tips

  • You can tap the next row to find out what your word will be used for next, which can be helpful.
  • As mentioned, this is a very USA-centric game, so try and consider any cultural references you’ve vaguely heard of!

#3: Orbia

Orbia is a true single-button game. Time your tap to try and zoom through the enemies and reach the next checkpoint, that’s the whole game!

Screenshots

All screenshots are from version 1.108:

Level select Skin select Mountains level Islands level
Orbia level select Orbia skin select Orbia mountains level Orbia islands level

Review

Tap to go to the next checkpoint, make it through enough checkpoints without failing to permanently complete the level, repeat. That’s the whole game.

Okay, so there’s a bit more. As you progress through each world, each with a different aesthetic and enemy style (e.g. one might have overlapping “lines” of enemies, another might have overlapping “circles” of enemies), you’ll earn crystals. These crystals can be used to buy powerups or skins along the way, all of which are optional.

The difficulty comes in trying to figure out the patterns formed by the enemy patterns, since multiple groups moving in different directions, with different speeds, changing direction and speed, makes it pretty tricky. It’s not unusual to watch for 10-15 seconds to figure out the exact moment to tap to move. Depending on your skin chosen, you’ll gain perks like shields (take a hit without failing the level), extra crystals, reduced enemy numbers, etc.

With a game all about timing and pattern recognition like Orbia, screenshots really don’t convey the game’s feel. Enemies move predictably, yet with a somewhat “alive” flow, and despite the complete lack of story there is still a motivation to progress through the clearly malevolent enemies.

There are an oddly high number of levels, with the initial world containing 2500, each consisting of 2-5 checkpoints to navigate between. Other worlds contain fewer but longer levels, increasing the consecutive successful movements required, and therefore the difficulty.

Overall the UI does a good job of keeping out of the way, and letting you focus on enemies and movement time. The powerups are fairly powerful (e.g. increased movement speed, extra shields, slowing down enemies) and affordable, I’m around 10-15% through the game and haven’t purchased any powerups whatsoever, preferring to spend crystals on permanent unlocks like skins.

Monetisation

Included in Google Play Pass, otherwise (according to store reviews) there are adverts every few deaths, and plenty of in-app purchases.

Tips

  • I’d recommend saving crystals for skins, as powerups are only temporary.
  • Skins reducing the number of enemies seem the most powerful, since they open up entirely new routes when navigating.
  • Once you’ve successfully made it to a checkpoint within a level, a “line” appears showing the route. This makes it significantly easier next time, so every extra movement helps.
  • The dots in the top left of the screen show the visited (grey) and unvisited (white) checkpoints within the current level.