Back in 2001, Compile’s Guru Logic Champ was released unto the world. It’s perhaps the greatest puzzle game on the GameBoy Advance, and certainly in the top three.
In it, you had to solve puzzles by rotating a grid of squares and shooting a limited number of blocks before sucking them off. Before, er, oh there’s not really any other way of saying it – sorry. In each puzzle there were solid immovable blocks that if you shot a block against them, they’d stay there, and doing so is the only way to get blocks to stay on the board. You could also shoot blocks against the blocks that you’d placed previously. You had to continue to shoot blocks and... the other thing... until you’d placed a block on every coloured square that needed them. This then formed a picture which coloured in and a joyous little melody played, and your heart was filled with warmth and undying love.
To make things a bit more difficult there were some special blocks. There were holes which didn’t allow blocks to be placed on top of them, bouncy blocks which moved one space (or bounced your block back one space) when you hit them, and then a different kind of bouncy block, an immovable one that if you tried to shoot a block against, it’d bounce right off.
There was a beauty in the puzzle design as harder puzzles allowed for themselves to be almost completely solved before revealing a little trick, something the player hadn’t noticed that not only meant that the puzzle couldn’t be solved, but had to be solved in an entirely different way. It’s a difficult thing to achieve in puzzle design, but any game that’s managed it shines brightly as a result.
If you’re worried that you’re reading a review of Guru Logic Champ, don’t be. It’s just that Snapdots takes exactly the same gameplay mechanics and in some instances, takes a little bit more besides.
For 500 DSiWare Nintendo Wii Nintendo Points™ Snapdots gives the player 150 puzzles that play in an identical manner to those in Guru Logic Champ. Some of these puzzles play identically because they are identical, with entire puzzles just transposed into Snapdots' whole. It’s here where the dilemma comes in. Where is the line?
After Compile collapsed, D4Enterprise consumed it. While it seems fair that the company would want to revisit the exceptionally strong puzzle mechanic (and they certainly have more right than Popcap did) it also seems a bit odd that the repetition of puzzles is so blatant. With an endless supply of items that could be turned into puzzles, it also seems needless.
Leaving any issues with borrowed content aside, the game’s design isn’t as good. The overall palette is bland and there’s just not that joy that Guru Logic Champ creates when you solve a puzzle. The puzzle design is mostly strong, though, and there are many occasions where it, well, shines brightly. The difficulty curve is perfect as the puzzles get harder and harder to solve with more and more potential methods of solving them. The last set includes some very difficult puzzles, and while it's never as hard as the format would allow it to be, there's plenty of thinking to be done.
Where the puzzle design isn’t as good is in its previews. Nearly every puzzle in Guru Logic Champ has a silhouette that resembles something and, even if they don’t want to, the player can’t help but guess at what they’re drawing. They’re either right – pat on the back – or completely wrong as the game takes an established shape or outline, something that was obvious, and changes it into something unexpected. Laugh, grin. Snapdots’ silhouettes are made up of things that are obvious and turn out to be that thing, or a random mess of lines and smudges that turn out to be something almost entirely unrelated to the puzzle you’ve just solved.
It does have some nice touches. After each level you’re given a cute little description, fact or joke about the item you’ve just drawn from a girl who has crash landed her UFO here on Earth and is discovering new items. It’s a quaint little tale that knits all the puzzles together nicely, but of course doesn’t offer the laugh-out-loud silliness that’s to be found in Guru Logic Champ’s story.
So, Snapdots. It doesn’t have the style of Guru Logic Champ, doesn’t have the charm, doesn’t have the humour, doesn’t have the cleverness. In spite of all that, it does have the main thing that made Compile’s game so great, and that’s the basic mechanics. If offers them to the player for 10% of the cost of solving the puzzles on the GameBoy Advance and it should at least be applauded for that because the more people that get to experience them the better. Solving the puzzles is as fun as it ever was, and as life-consuming. Solving them all still leaves a hole where the player wonders "what next?"
It’s also important to mention that without experiencing Guru Logic Champ first, Snapdots is still a very competent game, and one of the best puzzle games playable on the DSi. When you’ve finished though, we would urge that you to do what you can to experience Guru Logic Champ, because Snapdots does feel a bit like handling stolen goods sometimes.
If you want to get a feel for what the fuss is all about, head on over to our Guru Logic Champ review and grab the PC demo version linked on that page.
Score: 7/10
