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The Gold Mine Review for iPhone and iPod Touch

Posted by Mary Ann Neder on Feb 22, 2010 at 11:31 am | View Comments • Digg story
Filed Under: Games • Reviews • iPhone

How fast can you move a gold bar across a maze? The Gold Mine, developed by Klogia for the iPhone and iPod Touch, is a unique, single player puzzle game that encourages you to become creative both in your planning and strategy.

Review

The Gold Mine for iPhone and iPod Touch’s goal is for you to take a gold bar that is trapped inside the box and guide it towards the opening at the lower right hand corner of the screen. Simple enough, however there are obstacles which must be moved to clear the path to get the gold bar through the exit. These obstacles come in different shapes such as squares and L-shape pieces that pop up and rotate on their axis and rest at the next available space it can land on. These puzzle pieces cannot overlap one another; therefore you must get creative in your thinking. The puzzle will display the number of steps you have taken from the moment you began through completion.

The game offers 80 puzzles with 8 difficulty levels ranging from very easy to totally mind boggling. As you finish each level, the app keeps track of each completed level along with the number of steps it took you to finish it and your best scores. Ribbons are awarded for Minimum Steps taken. Options include the ability to skip levels, turning the game sound off and minimizing the layout, which turns off the gridlines on the puzzle board.

Controls are simple. Moving the gold bar around the board, is just a matter of dragging the piece into the open areas of the board. You can turn the gold bar horizontally or vertically around the area, provided there’s space to do so. To move the obstacles around, simply touch the object and it will rotate on a clockwise direction and rest at the next available empty slot.

Graphics and game sounds are clean and smooth. The puzzle layout reminds me of an old Egyptian piece made of stones with the menu display set in Hieroglyphics. It works quite well and very fitting for this unique puzzle concept. Game noise is limited only by the sounds of the stones as they make contact with the game board and little fanfare once you have completed the puzzle.

Recommendation
The Gold Mine for iPhone and iPod Touch comes recommended for puzzle fan of all ages. It is a creative puzzle concept that is both fun and addicting at the same time. It presents challenge after challenge pushing one to think outside the box. It is available now at the iTunes App Store for $2.99. If you would like to try out this game, there is also a free version called The Gold Mine Lite.

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