Lily in Puzzle World

No game other than the masterpiece Tetris is proof that a simple ingenious idea can be enough. It doesn't take much more than just that ingenuity to create something that can entertain forever, and the puzzle genre is in many ways quite grateful for this. Sure, it can be dressed in a nice visual outfit or accompanied by an exciting story, but just how good all the puzzles are becomes so central. You can strip everything else down to a minimum and still have something amazing. There are few genres that can get away with this as much if the core is intact.

It's been a little over six months since I tried Color Pals and even though my heart beats a little extra harder for puzzle games, I didn't have much fun with it at all. But we won't dwell on that. The reason I mention it is that Lily in Puzzle World is a bit like that, but it manages to be slightly more fun in all its simplicity.

Yet, it's too simple. Both in terms of puzzles and appearance. On a screen, you have to get the little figure Lily to a door that means you have completed the course. But first you have to reach a block with a key on it to open the door. It's very simple most of the time, and although some obstacles are added to the courses in the latter half, you'll find yourself breezing through the game's fifty levels in a fairly short time. A nice, but somewhat tiresome, music loop accompanies your little adventure and the design of the levels quickly becomes repetitive but with slightly varying degrees of difficulty and with slightly different objects. As for the music loop, it reminds me of one I produced for a friend's mobile game a lot of years ago. Now I don't think it's stolen or anything, I just want to emphasise the simplicity of it. Anyway, it becomes tedious and something more is needed here.

In addition to saw blades, arrows and the risk of missing a jump, there is a feature that transforms the large Lily into a smaller shape. In this form you can get through smaller spaces and jump higher. There are also some blocks that move or fall down when you walk on them and also mushrooms that you can bounce on. The fact that the course takes place on a fixed screen means that you get a good overview and quickly know what the journey to the goal will be like. You just need to give the course a quick glance and you know how to solve it all, and here I can feel that it could have been made much more tricky with this in mind. An extra twist that appeared after a number of levels would have made it more fun.

As for the design, I'm a bit conflicted. It has a visual style that can be compared to one of those colouring books that you fill in yourself. Except for Lily, it's all black and white, and here you could have done something interesting; blocks being coloured in when you walk on them, for example. There are so many times when, after completing a number of courses, you start thinking: "Yeah, nothing more happens?".

Some courses offer a bit of a challenge, especially when it comes to the timing of jumps, and I can imagine that this is a good gateway to puzzle gaming for younger folk. For me personally, this feels far too easy and this could have done with a few more difficult puzzles. It's not a disaster by any means, but in many ways it just exists in all its stripped down simplicity and might suit a real beginner to puzzle games who still wants to try something like this.