Puzzle Pelago

Review for People Curious About Buying This Game: The core design of this game is excellent and really holistic (which is my sort of game). It's solely a puzzle game (not a city-builder) that formats its puzzles around geometric arrangement of buildings and trait characteristics of resources (and their subsequently developed future resource trees) produced by said buildings. Your goal is simple but obviously non-trivial: some squares contain villagers that want different types of resources and your goal is to drag out buildings from resource squares and sometimes drag out subsequently produced resources from those dragged out buildings (e.g. drag on a tree tile to make a lumber mill -> drag on a lumber mill to produce a carpentry building). The challenge arises in making sure you optimize the space your buildings take up in order to meet the needs of all the villagers in order to advance to the next level. It’s actually a really elegant design that affords some neat depth. It’s also really visually pleasing (with colorful untextured “flat design” assets) with some suitably relaxing music. It’s actually a really great game but... Feedback for Developer: The introduction tutorial has a written copy that is likely from someone who’s first language may not have been English. Normally I’m charitable to people from different locales, but the phrasing is poor enough to make the first few experiences with the game needlessly more confusing and startling than it needs to be for no reason other than communication problems. Secondly, while the game lets you zoom in and zoom out to see how pretty the game looks, the game’s controls experience a lot of inconsistent behavior at certain levels of zoom (I liked playing somewhat zoomed out on a smaller phone). Basically what happens is that you’ll begin a drag gesture but then the arrow that indicates where the building will be created will just suddenly stop responding to inputs while my finger is still held down from that same drag gesture. This same behavior doesn’t happen when I’m zoomed in, but the game is a lot less easy to play when not fully zoomed out. Honestly, even though the game is pretty, one suggestion I’d make is just to lock the camera at a single zoom level so fine-tuning the drag gesture code is easier. You could still have neat camera animations in-between levels starting and completing. I’m sure if you watched people playtesting your game you’ll see that 95% of the time people play at the same zoom level and only really care about zooming in to see the pretty visuals during the first 3-4 minutes of play. Just a personal suggestion! I respect you offering zoom controls but the control issues that arise from it are not a fun tradeoff if you could solve that. If you fixed those two issues (the tutorial written copy and the control issues at different zoom levels) I’d easily give this game five stars! Awesome work though!

I think this is a very well done puzzle game. Some of the levels are quite tricky and others take less time but are still fun to solve — if you like puzzles I really recommend it!

There’s nothing obviously wrong with this game, but the puzzles feel too generic and I was bored after just a few minutes of gameplay and it didn’t get any better.

I was seriously doubting to buy this because of the only review being 1 star, but really, this is a great little puzzle game. Haven’t finished it yet, but several puzzle packs into the game I haven’t seen any advertising, or even a review request pop-up (which is probably why there are so few reviews). Love the game, some real brain breaking puzzles, nice relaxing graphics -> 5 star

I think that this game is really creative although I think that the pictures showcasing the game don’t do it justice. There definitely needs to be a video of what the game is like because this game is totally different than I expected it to be (which personally this is better than I thought it would be) I think there should be an option in the settings that disables the white hand that tells you to blow up stuff because it can get annoying. Also I personally wish there was an easier way to get rid of things other than the bomb. Maybe a simple double tap to destroy stuff instead of having to reach your thumb the whole way up and then double tapping. Other than that this is an interesting puzzle game.

Very fun game. Only minor problem is whenever I make barrels it won’t let me drag the barrel to another square, so I have to keep removing and remaking the barrel until eventually I can use it to make new buildings

This game is cool except for the white hand that comes up and scolds you every time you are trying something out. Makes it unplayable for me. It’s a puzzle game you should give me the option of doing it on my own. Every time I lay something down I have to second guess myself.

Always nice to see a clever new puzzle design. And the presentation as economy building and island graphics are lovely! The first few levels are quite easy, but they ramp up soon enough to require a bit of thought. Enjoying it! Edit: The more I play this, the more I like it!

I’m a casual gamer. I just started playing. This game is very well designed. The tutorial is great, the rules are clear, the user interface is smooth. It’s fun to learn and experiment. I applaud the developer for making this at such a fair price with no IAPs. Great job! We need more developers like you! 😀 Edit: The only thing I wish was added is a hint system. I’ve had to search online for solutions, and I’d rather just get a hint if needed.