(Review) Blueprint Word
Blueprint Word came across my desk and at first I was a little miffed by its ways. For some reason, it just didn’t click with me. It’s simple in execution, but because I came into this not knowing what it was really all about and without putting too much brain-power into thinking some of the concepts through, I had a rough first couple of rounds. Now having sunk some hours into it, can I say that the frustration was worth working through? I’d say that’s a safe bet. Let me break it down for you.
There may have been a logical wall for those first few levels because they just seemed a bit harder than the rest so far. I’m not sure that’s right. You control the game mainly by spinning gears and getting letters in the correct position to spell the given word or phrase. You can spin the gears both left and right. The game was easier when I figured that out, but I’m assuming the game figured you would figure that too because I don’t specifically remember it saying that. It dawned on me a little ways through the game. (Give me a break, I’m a little dense at times.) After that, it was a traditional puzzle game set up in a different format. It became a lot more fun, but also challenging. It’s all about which gear moves first and sometimes it mattered as they would only give you as many turns as you needed to finish while at other times it would give you more than the needed amount of spins. (Or, it’s possible, that sometimes I did it efficiently and other times I solved the puzzle eventually.)
They add more kinks into the works as you progress, but nothing very taxing. It’s all the same as before with different things to take into account. They have circles that will trade the places of letters held within them and other circles to press that just move a letter straight into an adjacent circle. (That sounds very similar, but trust me it’s different.) It’s more to think about, sure, but nothing taxing as I said. Give each puzzle a few spins and you’ll start to figure it out. The one that really gets me is the D-Pad Swappers and that’s more of a memorization thing. Left clicking on the D-Pad Swapper swaps the left and right letters while right-clicking swaps the top and bottom. The levels with the exact number of moves given as it takes to solve it (apparently) are the ones that get me the most with them because every now and then I’ll forget which is which and swap the wrong letters and I’ll have to start all over again. It’s not too bad. At worst I’ll lose roughly 30 seconds. It’s not the end of the world, but it is a face-palming experience.
Further Reading on Blueprint Word: Facebook / Official Page / Steam
