Previous Next

Puzzle games suffer from a debilitating paradox; if they're easy they're just plain boring and if they're tricky, they're inevitably frustrating. There are certain people who revel in that frustration and there are other people who would rather walk on their hands for three miles across rat faeces than load a puzzler into their ST.

Magic Lines is an electrical version of Pipe Mania, but instead of laying water pipes, you build a channel for a red spark to pass through. It's one of those move-the-blocks-before-the-time-runs-out puzzles with 24 pieces on a five by five grid. The mathematicians among you will already have worked out that that leaves one empty space. Clicking on a block adjacent to the space moves it into the hole.

Each block is either blank or has a motif on it. These motifs are sections of the channel and the idea is to form a channel that passes through all of the blue coloured pieces before the time runs out.

The graphics are excellent. The backdrops are attractive and the tiles themselves are finely detailed and move smoothly.

Cheerful sampled music plays throughout the game and acts as a sedative when the frustration gets to boiling point. A blip announces the movement of a block and a little tune plays if the spark leaves the channel - none of which is exactly spectacular, but it all helps in the end.

Magic Lines is a tricky little puzzler. Though there are much better puzzle games around, it might be worth £20 of your money - if your idea of fun is to get so frustrated that you have a manic desire to repeatedly hit your keyboard with your brother's head!