Tanglewood is a new puzzle game from developer Mark Davies. It is very similar to the game Tangram where you are given a bunch of random shapes and must use them all to fill up the space given to you. In Tanglewood, you are given a set number of shapes and must use them all to perfectly fill up a cut out space on the board. It may seem easy, but trust me, it’s not.

The basic game itself is easy to understand and master. Just fill in the area with all the given shapes and you complete the level. Of course that’s easier said than done. Even on the easy difficulty setting, puzzles will get harder and harder as you progress. Luckily, if you get stumped, the game does have a hint system that shows you where to place the current block.

Controls in the game are fairly straight forward. Drag pieces with your finger and swipe to rotate the pieces. Because the board features gravity, pieces will fall if you let go of them. So in some tiny way, it all has some similarities to Tetris as well. If you want to clear the board a bit of pieces that are in your way, just flick them to the top and they go back to the “dock” where they first were. Other than that, there isn’t much more to the controls.

Tanglewood is a very challenging game. Trying to get all the pieces to fit into a given space can be quite hard at times, but I’m a sucker for real puzzle games that make you think. The only area  in the game that I would improve upon would be the drag controls. I wish the game allowed for use of multitouch in order to drag and fit 2 blocks together more precisely. The rotational controls are also a bit finicky as there would be times that I just couldn’t get the shapes to rotate the way I wanted them too. I’d rather have it where I could hold on to the block with one finger, and rotate it with another, but currently, all you can do is sort of just hold the block in different ways in order for it to turn on its own. If the dev can improve the controls a bit, the game would be perfect. Other than the control issue for me, Tanglewood is a unique take on on the Tangram style game. I really enjoyed it a lot and hope more updates will be coming for it as well as more levels.

Tanglewood is available now in the App Store for $0.99. It is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later.

Description

Simply not challenged by your average place and click block games anymore? Well, welcome to Tanglewood: the new simple yet addictive puzzle game which combines physics and intelligence.

The aim is simple. Drag the different shaped blocks from your collection at the top of the screen and position them within the shape provided. Customisable physics allow you to set your level of gravity, friction, spin and linear speed to how ever you like it to make Tanglewood unique to you!

With 70 unique levels at 3 different difficulty levels not only is Tanglewood continually challenging but the process is addictive! Each level records your fastest time – perfect for competing against yourself on long journeys!

Getting stuck? Well you build up hints for each correctly completed level and choose when, and if, you use these to help you when you’re stuck.

[via App Store]