A Mind-Bending Puzzler of Squares and Numbers
Over recent years, Penguin Pop Games have come to the games market with silly, slightly absurd gaming experiences. The names pretty much sell The Pizza Delivery Boy Who Saved the World and Cat President: A More Purrfect Union, alone, whilst others – read: Taco Tom 2 and Salamander County Public Television – are quite obviously fun little endeavours.
But amongst the madness are a few Penguin Pop Games titles that test the mind in more complex ways. We’ve previously seen that in Pocket Puzzle and Cronostase Electric Collection, and now have similar in Square Logic.
Is Your Mind Made for Square Logic?
For us, whilst it promises plenty of puzzling action to challenge the mind, we’ve found Square Logic an extremely simple playthrough. That’s not to say others will find it equally as easy though.
In fact, we can assure you that Square Logic can provide a bit of a test, especially if the player isn’t the most spatially aware or the most logical of thinking. See, during our review process, a process that has seen us be able to whip through dozens of puzzles without a care in the world, we’ve passed the pad to others, if only to see if different mindsets allow for different things. Mostly, those others have struggled to understand what is needed for Square Logic completion. We don’t understand why they struggle, but they do.
It’s obvious then – if logic is your bag, you’ll fly through what Penguin Pop have put together here. You’ll also be gathering up Gamerscore like there is no tomorrow. But struggle with block placements, and the understanding of the mechanics involved, and your time with Square Logic may well be an entirely different kettle of fish.
The Core Gameplay Loop
So what is Square Logic? Well, it’s basically a twist on a nonogram puzzle, in which you are provided with a grid, numbers scattered within. Your goal is to create squares and rectangles to fill that grid, ensuring that only one of the numbers is ever found within any one shape. For instance, if you’ve got a ‘2’, you’ll need a 1×2 or 2×1 shape that, at some point, covers the ‘2’. Similar goes for any ‘3’, or ‘5’, or ‘7’. Things change slightly with the likes of a ‘4’, ‘6’, ‘8’ or so, with deeper squares and rectangles available. For instance, that ‘6’ could well run in a 1×6 strip, or one that is 6×1 across, but equally it could be a 2×3 or 3×2 block shape.
How you go about fitting in each shape, to fill the entirety of the grids delivered to your eyes, is where the skill of Square Logic comes in.
It’s a super simple premise to understand, at least for us, and by working through each stage, perhaps picking off some corner numbers first, navigating around to ensure correct placement, is fairly simple. In fact, it wasn’t until we were about 90 levels deep when we came across anything that could be considered tricky, and even then, Square Logic has an easy enough to use interface that placement, removal and resets are swiftly actioned.
Bigger Grids, Bigger Challenges
Grid sizes run at 5×5, 7×7, 10×10 and 15×15 increments, each complete with 50 stages a pop, with the bigger grids obviously taking longer to solve than the smaller ones. But Penguin Pop are ensuring that you’ll be tempted along by some full lifts of Gamerscore, picked up for completion of the 5×5 and 7×7 puzzles. We’d have loved to have seen that build out further to the bigger difficulties, because, well, no matter what anyone says, Gamerscore and achievements make the world go round and continually keep us playing.
Skipping certain puzzles should you need to is reasonably easy too, and as long as you tick off a certain amount of stages, will find further ones unlocking along the way. It’s a pretty good system that means you’ll – occasionally – have to work for completion.
A Clean Look for a Tricky Test
And frankly, we like the way Square Logic looks too. As you may expect to hear, it’s all fairly basic in terms of visuals, but the UI is strong enough to drag it along, injecting various colour hues as you dive deep into each level. With an easy to read system front and centre, there’s rarely any frustration in how this way plays out.
At least there’s not if your mind works in the way Square Logic wants it to. We’ve loved our few hours with this little puzzler, racing through early puzzles, before being reined in ever-so-slightly with the 10×10 and 15×15 grids. But like previously mentioned, that’s not going to be the case for all, and we’ve seen multiple people put the controller down within mere minutes of glancing at the tests on offer, unable to a) understand what is required, or b) have the patience to complete the puzzles provided. We guess this is a game that will split the community – some will love it for what it is, others will hate. Only you will know for sure.
A Clever Puzzler for the Logically Inclined
What’s not to debate is that if you are on the hunt for a nicely designed, well crafted puzzler, and are itching for a little test of the mind, Square Logic is easily capable of providing it. It works exactly as intended, with no fuss and no bother. If you get it, Square Logic will deliver in spades. But if you don’t…
Important Links
Buy Square Logic on Xbox – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/square-logic/9pf2x7mcwqkl
