Yesterday at MOA, I bought two puzzle games to play around in my spare time. I wasn’t actually planning to buy one, but one incident led to another and… you get the picture. Anyhow I decided to look around at the National Bookstore branch there to see if they have a stock of TaleCraft. But unfortunately after almost an hour searching, I still couldn’t find that elusive story-telling-game. As I was at the cashier’s line, I noticed this puzzle game at one of the shelves. I took one and bought it then and there.

Dilemma Games (299.75 php @ National Bookstore)

The objective of the puzzle is simple, just remove the rightmost ring attached to the object. Of course, you don’t need to use hammers or pliers to twist and turn it because that would be cheating. The game also includes a solution inside the box, but I didn’t dare to even open or look at it because if I do, I’ll just be wasting the money I bought for that game.

I took a picture of it before and after I unboxed it. After that I started tinkering with the object, as I wasn’t planning to solve it yet. But as luck would have it, after much twisting and turning, the ring came off. Ok so much for the 300 bucks, gone in less than 3 minutes.

After that, I called it a level zero puzzle, that I think even a 5 year old can solve. Moving on…

After my girlfriend and I left National Bookstore, I decided to go to Powerbooks to search for that elusive TaleCraft. I know that these are the only stores that sold that particular game, so I usually search for it in every mall I went. But then we passed by this store with a lot of toys in their display window. I was curious of course, not for the toys, but I wondered if I could find what I was looking for in there.

Inside the shop I came upon another one of these puzzle, this time it was more professional looking. It was packaged properly, it was die-casted and has a metallic coating, and costs more. I remembered seeing it the first time at the Podium when this girl showed it to me, got a sample, and asked me to try and solve it. I never thought I would see this puzzle again.

Cast puzzles (525.00 php @ Hobbes and Landes)

The same objective is required in this puzzle, you just have to separate each of the four ‘latches’ that formed the puzzle itself. Easy enough? Not really. This is a level 6 puzzle and the hardest of all the puzzles. The puzzle name is Quartet, from the Cast series. The series contains puzzles that ranges from level 1 to level 6. Simply put, level 1 puzzles are the most easiest and level 6 are the most hardest. Wonder why I bought the hardest? I’m not really expecting to solve this puzzle easily, but the reason is that, I get more out of the money I spent to buy this thing. So I can say sulit talaga.

You can see at the back of the box that there are three ways of doing the puzzle. It looks small, but I tell you it’s really not that easy. I was fascinated by these kinds of puzzles that I’m planning to buy all the Cast series for the reason of collecting and solving them. They also have a website, but I dare not visit it ‘coz of the fear that I may see a solution there…

Anyway, I started playing around with the puzzle earlier today, and even my friend got hooked at it and was playing it for the last couple of hours. He did eventually gave up after about 4 hours, for fear that he might get insane or something. Hahaha.

With all these puzzles, I still haven’t mastered the cube which is sitting idly in the corner of my room.

Tags: games, puzzle