Puzzler World XL

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

Puzzler World XL is a family-friendly Puzzle game released on mobile devices in 2010 and ported to the Nintendo DSi via the DSiWare service in 2012, as well as being released on the Nintendo 3DS eShop. Puzzler World XL is a grab-bag of different kinds of puzzles all jumbled together one after another. From one game to the next you may find yourself playing a game of Sudoku Mini, Numberlink, a Crossword Puzzle, Hangman, a Word Search, with this game advertising over 1000 separate puzzles.

The presentation in this game uses a colorful, somewhat goofy-looking presentation using 2D visuals and cartoonish music that’s pretty forgettable but definitely makes this come across as something aimed toward kids.

That’s not to say that this game’s challenge level is targeted towards kids. While not overly-tough, I would say this game’s puzzles tend to be of moderate difficulty, with that difficulty naturally varying based on how much trouble you have on one type of puzzle or another.

As for the quality of the puzzles present here, I’m tempted to say that this is a “Jack of All Trades, master of none” sorta’ situation, but honestly the Puzzle quality is mostly pretty good here. Puzzles pretty much all use the touchscreen in sensible ways, with puzzles calling for numbers and letters providing you a little space to write them into, with decent character recognition (though I did have a lot of trouble getting the game to recognize the letter “D”).

However, there are places where you can see this shotgun approach to adding puzzle variety to the game can cause issues. Puzzles are generally pretty short and somewhat simple, so you never really feel like you “get in a groove” here. And features you may expect in games dedicated to these sorts of puzzles, like interactive tutorials or the ability to take notes, aren’t present here.

Having said that, I can see the appeal of this game. For $5, you’re getting 1000 puzzles in a wide variety of puzzle types that keep changing things up often enough to keep the gameplay fresh. Players more interested in playing a quality version of one type of puzzle may find this game failing to keep their interests, but those attracted to the grab-bag nature of this game will likely be satisfied with what’s here.

tl;dr – Puzzler World XL is a family-friendly Puzzle game that’s grab-bag of different kinds of puzzles all jumbled together. The rapid-fire nature of the puzzles here makes it so it’s harder to “get into a groove” with any one puzzle type, but there’s a lot of content here and plenty of variety, and Puzzle game fans who find those things attractive should definitely give this a look.

Grade: C+

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