Geekshow

Spotlight – Subway Shuffle App

MacGeek reviews an addictive puzzle game for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Video and more after the break.

Have you ever played that game where the goal is to slide pieces around in order to complete the picture? It can be fun, but after you solve it once, the fun pretty much ends there. Well, take elements of that, add colors, geometric shapes & a subway theme and you have Subway Shuffle.

The object of this addictive puzzle game by R Aubrey Hearn is to get your subway car to its destination. Each color token (subway car) can only travel on its own color line. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Well, the first few levels are almost remedial, but the difficulty curve jumps quite a bit at about level 14. Although the play can be maddening,  it can be lots of fun at the same time. Sometimes you feel like giving up, but then you see the light. However, for those who don’t see the light, there are a few options. first, there is a hint button in the shape of a question mark. If you get stuck, just click the “?” and Subway Shuffle will move a token in the right direction. The good news is that you can use the hint repeatedly until it’s solved. (Is “solved” the right word if you used the hint button to complete the entire puzzle?) Second, if you make an obvious mistake, you can just hit the back button and it will move the last token  to its previous position and subtract a “move” from your current number of moves. Third, you may also skip to any puzzle you want from the  All Levels menu. There are currently 85 in the full version, and about 10 or so in the lite (aka free/demo) version. It’s not a lot, but that gives you a smattering of levels to try.

That brings us to the “move” tracker. This convenient feature tracks how many moves you make. On the downside, it also correlates that to the minimum number of moves it takes to complete said level. (84/22  -  yikes!) On the Levels menu, it shows you which puzzles you have solved (including how many “hints” you may have used) with one green check mark. You get a second check mark, if you solve it within the given number of moves. You also get a preview of the level map and how many moves it’ll take to solve. Let me just say that I’m not looking forward to level 84 with its 329 moves or the last level at 589 moves. That’s more than 17 times as many moves as number 24 (34 moves), and level 24 is a doozie. Let’s just say that there are YouTube videos showing how to solve it.

Subway Shuffle was designed and developed by an MIT Computer Scientist. It’s compatible with the iPhone and the iPod Touch with the iPhone software 2.0 update.

The lite version is available for free here and the full version is available for $2.99 here.

There’s also a free demo for the Mac at SubwayShuffle.com

Here’s a video from their website: