IOS Review #90: Zengrams

Title: Zengrams
Developer: Andreas Boye
Platforms: IOS Universal
Price: $2.99
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There are numerous puzzle games about manipulating colors, and many games about forming and reshaping figures, but Zengrams combines those two concepts to deliver a fantastic minimalist puzzle game, perhaps the best I've played since Blek.

Zengrams excels at taking a simple mechanic and exploring it in myriad challenging ways. Each level provides a collection of shapes and an outline of a figure; you must manipulate the shapes to fit the outline. Where Zengrams stands out is its use of color. Overlapping shapes of different colors results in each shaded area becoming its own shape, while like-colored shapes merge together, allowing you to seamlessly combine and split shapes into new figures. Honestly, the GIF below demonstrates the concept in a more succinct fashion.

'Simple to understand, difficult to master' aptly describes Zengrams' puzzles. Not only must you be mindful of how and where you place shapes, you also have a limited amount of moves for each level. The early stages ease you in, but soon the challenge ramps up, due to shapes merged or offset in tricky ways or the number of moves you can perform. It's the kind of game where you'll spend 30 minutes on a puzzle, trying it this way and that way, and then came back an hour or a day later with a fresh approach and realize the solution was staring you in the face this whole time. The obvious solution isn't always the correct one, forcing you to think of more concise and efficient ways to complete puzzles. Each new level invokes that sense of "Is this even possible...", and finally solving a particularly challenging level feels so rewarding.

Zengrams' minimalist presentation is merely a stylish facade hiding the challenging nature of its puzzles and the seamless way shapes merge makes each of the game's 70 levels a satisfying experience. You can purchase Zengrams for $2.99.