Developer: Hallgrim Games, Christopher Mielack
Publisher: Hallgrim Games, Christopher Mielack
Platform: PC, Mac, Android, iOS
Tested on: Mac
Puzzle Pelago – A Drag & Drop Economy – Review
Rebuild and resource the villages on the islands of Puzzle Pelago by solving deceivingly simple puzzles. Through drag & drop mechanics, produce various goods exactly where the islanders need them – from wooden planks and wheat to barrels, beer, and bread.
Story
The story is quite unclear from the gameplay itself. But according to Steam “The islands of the Puzzle Pelago have been devastated by a storm, and now the islanders cannot figure out how everything was laid out! Space is tight on the tiny islands, and roads may not cross – lest the stubborn haulers run into each other!”. It is unfortunate that this story isn’t highlighted more in the gameplay itself, although it’s definitely not a loss.
Graphics
The game is extremely aesthetically pleasing, from beginning to end. Puzzle Palego is presented in low-poly (a polygon mesh in 3D computer graphics) art-style, accentuated with lively, contrasting colors and subtle animations that bring the whole game to life. The visuals are simple and minimalistic, and yet it’s truly impressive. Just like the UI of the game.
The menu, icons, and text are presented quite clearly making it easy to interact with the on-screen items/selections. On the home screen, the menu is placed in one block on the right side of the screen. When in-game, the menu is neatly hidden behind a hamburger menu icon. This gives more room on the screen so that the player can fully enjoy the scenery in its entirety. This doesn’t sound like much, but it is. It’s apparent that there’s a lot of thought put into the display and UI of the whole game.
Sound
Puzzle Pelago – A Drag & Drop Economy brings us jolly, Nordic Folk melodies through compositions of olden days instruments such as accordions and lutes. Accompanied by the sound effects of seagulls, woodworking, and sea waves washing against the shore, the ambiance takes us back in time to the Late Middle Ages, ready to dance and knock down our fifth pint in a notorious tavern by the docks. It’s fun, enjoyable and very suitable for the game.
Gameplay
The game is a puzzle, drag & drop, indie game. The puzzles throughout the chapters use logic. It might not seem that hard but these puzzles can still quite challenge your noggin.
The core mechanic of Puzzle Pelago – A Drag & Drop Economy is not that complicated. The player has to create new workshops by dragging from resources or existing workshops and putting them where they need to be – locations are indicated by their icons above villages throughout the island. Here are some examples of the drag & drop principle: from a forest, you can drag out a lumberjack that produces logs. From a lumberjack, you can drag out a sawmill that produces planks. You can even combine two goods to produce a more advanced one by placing those two near each other e.g. combining ore and coal to produce iron or tools and wheat and windmills to produce flour. But by dragging those goods you create a path connecting the workshops in the process. And it is said paths that could make the puzzle so difficult since you are not allowed to cross any paths (without a bridge).
The puzzles are spread out over 10 chapters, each with six islands and its own puzzle, giving us over 100 puzzles to solve. The difficulty increases with each chapter which also increases the game time/time to solve. The beginning chapters might take 5-10 minutes to solve while later chapters can take up to 30 minutes.
What defines the difficulty is the number of resources and the way you lay your paths since you may not cross them. The more resources and workshops you have to create, the more paths you have to lay down, the more complicated it gets to obtain a solution.
Each chapter has its own resources. For example: in chapter 1, you will have to work with only wood and its associated workshops, where other chapters you will need to gather wheat or iron. Combining different resources will also give you a different outcome. That’s basically it. You drag from a resource and drop it to create goods. Drag it again to make better good. The actual challenge to these puzzles is placing the right goods in the right place without crossing paths.
Conclusion
Puzzle Pelago – A Drag & Drop Economy is a casual puzzle game that can be enjoyed anywhere. It challenges your logic and the way you think. This might be fun for just leisurely killing time or you could make a habit out of playing the game daily to train your brain. You can get in and out of the game as you please without losing the flow of it.
Puzzle Pelago - A Drag & Drop Economy – Review,
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