Posted by Ryan Johnson on 03 4, 2010

LetsTans

Categories: Games, | 3 comments | |

Whew! This one’s a toughie! LetsTans by the well known puzzle makers The Grabarchuk Family is a complete Tangram puzzle experience for iPhone and iPod Touch. This app contains 210 unique puzzles and is comprised of three different puzzle modes, each of which offer their own unique mind bending challenges that’ll keep you glued to the game for hours!

The three different puzzle modes are Classic, Replica, and Arcade, each packing a 70 puzzle punch. Classic mode offers a traditional Tangram puzzle experience where you have seven geometrically shaped puzzle pieces that you’ve got to fit into a single Tangram shape. I found this mode to be very easy. I cranked through all 70 puzzles in a single sitting. The only problem was that by this point I thought I was a puzzle solving genius and figured I’d knock out the rest of the app in a couple hours. That was until I tried Replica and Arcade mode. Holy crap they’re hard!

In Replica mode you’ve got to stare among a sea of Tangram pieces to identify a grouping that matches the Tangram shape. This may not sound hard, but trust me it is. I got through a handful of puzzles quickly before my mind started playing tricks on me. Feeling slightly over matched I switched over to Arcade mode. I figured that sounded easy enough. All you have to do is drag a transparent Tangram shape over a screen packed with Tangram pieces to unveil the exact match. Piece of cake right? Wrong! I got a handful of puzzles deep before my brain seized up. I definitely have some practicing to do! What makes both Replica and Arcade mode so much more difficult than Classic mode is that not only are you staring at a screen jam packed with shapes as opposed to a stark white background with only 7 shapes, but you’ve got to also account for both portrait and landscape modes. It essentially adds a total of 4 different looks that you’ve got to account for as opposed to just one in Classic mode. These modes are for serious puzzle solvers only. They are no joke!

One things for sure, LetsTans is a well put together app. The game offers hand crafted puzzles in various modes, it’s interface and menus are laid out well, it has adequate instruction in all the right places, offers hints if you need them (you can adjust the number of hints), and gives you the option to play one puzzle after another or to skip ahead or back to any puzzle of your choice. The only knock I have against the app is that I felt like the Classic mode was too easy. I was surprised that I was able to get through all of the puzzles in one sitting. The other two modes I found to be super challenging though and I think will provide most people with hours upon hours of problem solving fun that’s well worth the price of admission. If you’d like a free taste of what this app has to offer before you get the full monty, go checkout LetsTans Lite.

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