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Publisher Chillingo
Developer
Released: March 29, 2012
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Genre: Puzzle Players: 1 Also on: + Universal app
Supported Features:
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Review Scores: (?) 8 - Gameplay 7 - Graphics 7 - Sound 10 - Value FINAL SCORE: |
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Rinth Island Rinth Island is a surprisingly original stacking puzzle game with a unique 3D twist and colorful charm that will keep you addicted for a lot longer than you might expect, thanks mostly to the 60 levels that beg you to play them in all four clever game modes; Adventure, Timed, Steps, and Crystals. Rinth Island dazzles the mind and your senses as you traverse these cylindrical puzzles that rotate around your hero as you push around blocks, climb ladders, and drop down through gaps trying to solve some mind-bending puzzles, and unlock other puzzles games, you can screw up and there is no “undo” button so prepare to restart some of these levels…more than once. There is a lot of clever interaction with not only the environment but objects within the environment like firing a cannon to blast away a rock block on the opposite side of the circular level.
Your chosen mode will dictate the requirements for finishing each puzzle. In Adventure mode you merely need to navigate your way to the end of the puzzle and collect the special prize, but Time mode has you racing to beat the clock and Steps (my favorite) counts your steps and rewards you for the shortest route. The final mode scatters a bunch of crystals around the level and asks you to fetch them all. If you manage to complete all 60 levels on all four modes you can then start to dabble with creating your own brain-teasers using a fairly robust and entirely intuitive level creation tool then upload those levels to the Rinth Island community as well as download other players’ custom levels giving this game unlimited gameplay potential. Levels are sorted by your Friends’ levels or Featured levels. The app is universal so you can play and create on either your iPad or a smaller device. The look and design of Rinth Island is interesting at times with simple backgrounds and a fairly repetitive building-block construction where textures do repeat but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I did notice that some of the more complicated levels (ones with a lot of blocks) had some minor framerate issues when spinning in 3D, but I will chalk those up to me playing on my lowly iPad 1. I really enjoyed the short scrolling intro movies that introduce each new area. The rest of the story is told through character portraits and text boxes and can easily be skipped. There are some nice jaunty music selections with an island vibe and some great sound effects for the interactive objects. As far as puzzle games go, Rinth Island is in a class of its own, not only by putting a new 3D spin on the stacking puzzle genre, but by giving gamers the tools to build their own levels and extend their enjoyment well beyond the scope of this already quite substantial game. And it’s only $1, so you might be tempted to buy a few of those in-app treats. Screenshots 
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