11111Game

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1

.

Review:

11111Game is a Puzzle game released on PC in 2022 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2023. In this game, players are presented with a field of paths that numbered square tiles shift along, and they can use edges of the field to force two tiles to combine, adding their numbers together, with the goal being to use this to create the maximum number achievable given the current level’s character limit and base system.

Er… I feel I should better-explain that last bit. The numbers on the tiles are constrained by a character limit that differs in each level. One level might allow three characters per tile (example numbers being “123” and “574”), while another will allow five (example numbers being “12345” and “82618”). However, the numerical system changes as well, using different base systems. We are most familiar with Base-10, where you move to the next digit when you’ve reached 10 in a digit (such as going from “29” to “30”), but other well-known base systems include Base-2 AKA “binary” (where “1101” equals 13 in our standard Base-10 system) and Base-16 AKA “hexadecimal” (where numbers after ten start using letters in digits until they reach 16, leading to numbers that look like “1EE8C4”).

Have I lost you? I feel like I might have lost you.

Suffice it to say, if you have a good grasp of math, this game’s puzzles will hopefully make sense to you, but if your math skills are less than great, you will likely be left feeling lost: “Wait, I just added 2 + 2, so why did that make 11?” (the answer: “because you’re operating in base-3”). However, if you’re left scratching your head at this, don’t worry – I understand it as a concept and it’s still confusing to me, and I frequently don’t have an instinctual understanding of how the math adds up – I find myself counting things out pretty often here.

It doesn’t help that the game does a poor job of explaining the game’s rules to the player, particularly that then you pass the highest number your current base and character limit allow, it wraps around back to 1 again. I spent a good few minutes in the game’s earliest levels puzzling over just what the heck I was supposed to be doing, all because this game refused to explain itself. And even after I had an idea what I was doing, I was still unsure what the overall point of the game is – you have a goal of a certain number of matches to make before the game moves on to a different base and character limit, but there doesn’t appear to be a timer or a score.

Does this game even have a fail state? Can you even lose at this game, or could a bumbling fool just randomly keep moving tiles indefinitely until they accidentally stumble into winning answers? Honestly, sometimes I felt like this described me, as I wasn’t sure how to get the numbers to add up how I wanted, or couldn’t get the tiles to shift how I wanted them to.

The visuals here are pretty unextraordinary, just showing flat colors and little decoration. By contrast, the soundtrack to this game is fantastic, using some really catchy electronica tunes. It’s just a shame that the soundtrack is stuck in a game that’s going to be really difficult for most players to enjoy.

In the end, quite simply, 11111Game is a Puzzle game for math nerds, and only for math nerds. Its rules are poorly-explained, and even once you understand them you’ll have a difficult time thinking the way the game wants you to think. And even then, there seems to be a lack of any sort of overall goal. Only an excellent soundtrack keeps this game from being a complete waste of time for anyone who doesn’t get excited about math.

tl;dr – 11111Game is a Puzzle game where players slide tiles in a grid to try to combine them to add up their numbers to match the current target with shifting base and character amounts. This game’s rules are poorly-explained, and even once you understand them, there’s little here that’s compelling for anyone but math nerds. The one exception is a very good soundtrack, but even that isn’t enough to make me recommend this game to most people.

Grade: C

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