Neves was released quite a while ago (October 21st, 2007), and I hadn’t heard about till it won an award and received a price drop. Needless to say I picked it up and decided to give it a go.
Neves is a puzzle game that involves moving seven variously shaped pieces to fit a silhouette of a picture. You will become very intimate with these pieces as they’re used in all the puzzles. You can rotate, flip, and move them to try and fit what you believe is their proper placement. Once all the pieces have been placed properly you are told the puzzle has been complete. That’s pretty much all there is to it. Nice and simple.
The game presents you with three modes that share all the same puzzles. The first mode is called “silhouettes?” and gives you all the time in the world to complete the puzzles. It, like all the modes, are divided into Rooms and Stages. There are 4 rooms and 3 stages to each of those rooms. You begin with the first stage in all rooms and upon completing any stage in that room you get the next stage. There are about 48 puzzles in each stage. The second mode is a time mode where you have 3 minutes to complete the puzzle. If you manage to finish it in under a minute you get a gold medal otherwise you get a silver medal. The final mode is a mode that only allows you to have seven moves and thus forces you to complete them with the minimum amount of moves. The game also contains a room that you can see your completion percentage of each mode and look at the puzzles you’ve finished.
The entire game is controlled with the touch screen and stylus. These controls are very easy and very fluid. There are no real problems with the stylus or moving the pieces around. You click and drag to move them, grab and edge and twist it to rotate, and double tap them to flip them. Going through the menus is easy with the stylus as well.
As far as looks go nothing is very flashy. The menus are fairly drab; nothing to get you excited about tangrams (can you be?). The tiles are very plain, but have about nine different colorations and patterns you can choose. The music in the game is very mellow and reminds me of the music in Clubhouse Games. It never gets annoying and is nice background music to think to. It features about nine different melodies that can play when you’re working on a puzzle. All of the coloration and music can be randomized in the options menu so that each experience is different.
Multiplayer mode is something I have yet to try. It can be single cart play and the game does not have any wifi. From what I understand it’s a race with the other person to see who can solve three puzzles the fastest. Given that some of these puzzles had me thinking for hours I wonder how long these matches could last.
Overall, I’d say that Neves is an alright game. It’s nothing really amazing and it’s not terribly horrible. It’s a puzzle game and I wouldn’t expect more than what I’ve already gotten from it. I don’t really think I’d recommend it someone normally. I would recommend it if you like tangram puzzles and have some free time to fit some in. They are a great thing to do when you need to kill very little time. Most of the puzzles take but a few seconds or minutes to solve. So, if you like tangram puzzles pick this puppy up.
[Editor’s Comment] – A huge thanks to n00b who took the time to review this game and share his opinion!
