Aqua Jigsaw – Review

Our rating:

By: Aqua Jigsaw

Version #: 1.0

Date Released: 2008-11-21

Developer:

Price: 0.99

User Rating:

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Jigsaw is one of those games that just could not not make its way to the iPhone platform. Given the multi-touch capability of the device, playing jigsaw on the iPhone was as inevitable as it is straightforward. It’s really simple: You take a piece you think would fit a certain spot by tapping and holding on to it and put it there by dragging and dropping it. You can figure this out even without going through a tutorial or reading a help section because, come on, who doesn’t know how to do a jigsaw puzzle?

One of the implementations of jigsaw available from the App Store is Aqua Jigsaw. It is named as such by virtue of the fact that the jigsaw puzzles are derived from a gallery of awe-inspiring pictures of aquatic life. You can choose to solve a puzzle derived from a picture of a clown fish, a sea turtle or an anemone, among many others. You can also opt to make a puzzle out of a picture of, say, yourself in the bathtub from your photo library.

You play in either rectangular or irregular mode, referring to the shapes of the puzzle pieces. You’ll find solving a puzzle with rectangular pieces a bit more difficult since all the pieces have the same exact shape, compared to irregularly shaped ones, which most people are used to playing with and which in a way could clue you in as to which pieces belong to the edges and corners. You can also set the difficulty level by adjusting a settings bar which increases or decreases the number of puzzle pieces.

In Aqua Jigsaw, pieces that fit together clink in place and cannot be taken apart from each other once they’re linked. This means that if you drag one of these pieces, the others move with it. This makes playing lots easier. The app also has a hint feature and save-and-load capability.

There’s another jigsaw app, called Jigsaw Wild, that, except for its wildlife theme, is exactly the same as Aqua Jigsaw. No, it’s not a rip-off, seeing as it’s from the same developer that made Aqua Jigsaw. (Hence, a separate review for Jigsaw Wild would be redundant.) It would be good though to have just a single app combining the two. The present state of my cluttered home screen already resembles a jigsaw puzzle, so the inclusion of another two icons of two apps that basically do the same is not so feasible.

Quick Take

Value: Low-Medium
Would I Buy Again: Not into jigsaw, so no.
Learning Curve: Very, very low
Who Is It For: Jigsaw puzzle fans
What I Like: Easy to play, lots of awesome pictures
What I Don’t: Aqua Jigsaw and Jigsaw Wild sold separately.

Final Statement: The source idea is not very spectacular to begin with, so it’s no surprise that there’s nothing really spectacular with Aqua Jigsaw. But it does make good use of the iPhone’s multi-touch feature and showcases wonderful pictures of life under the sea (in the case of its sister app, Jigsaw Wild, life in the wild).

My Rating: 2.5/5