Personal Computer Games


Jumbly

Author: CA
Publisher: DK Tronics
Machine: Spectrum 48K

 
Published in Personal Computer Games #4

Jumbly

Remember those flat plastic puzzles in which you had to slide squares around until they were in the right order? Now you can do the same thing on a computer.

Jumbly is a very nice version of the puzzle with the added twist that some of the ten pictures you have to unscramble are continually scrolling. This means that in their jumbled-up state, it's extremely difficult to work out which piece goes where.

Another addition is that you have a target number of moves to solve the puzzle in (initially 150). If you make the target you're supplied with a code which allows you to move on to the next picture.

Jumbly

If you don't make it, you gnash your teeth and try again. I fear that quite a few buyers of Jumbly will do a good deal of teeth-gnashing. For if you hold down a key a fraction of a second too long, you will end up sliding two squares instead of one. You only have to do this a few times to blow any chance of reaching your target.

Fortunately you do have the option of peeking at the unscrambled picture you're aiming for. And of stopping the scrolling although this stops you getting the code when you solve the puzzle.

Anyone who does manage to get through all ten puzzles will win the right to design a picture for Jumbly II.

But although Jumbly is novel, colourful and slick, at heart it remains a simple puzzle which is made frustrating in a rather artificial way. A bit like asking someone to count to ten while holding his head submerged in a bucket of glue.

CA

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