Giveaway of the Day - Christmas Puzzles

Christmas Puzzle:

Introduction:

Here’s another jigsaw puzzle game from Fly games. It’s basically the same as last weeks game except it has Christmas images, so I’ve just edited my review from last week to take account of the changes. This game would have been much more appropriate last week, but hey, who’s complaining. As usual with most game giveaways, no shortcut is installed to the desktop or Start/Programs menu. So make sure you make a note of the install path. The install path may be different depending upon where you installed last weeks puzzle (if you did). Mine went to E:\games and tried to install into the same folder as last weeks game, so you may need to change the install path manually, however it shouldn’t stop the game working if it is installed to the previous weeks folder. See the problem section below for information about using the official demo to get shortcuts installed to both the desktop and Start Menu.

Unfortunately Fly games no longer seem to feature the game that they gave away last year that I mentioned last week called The Infinite Jigsaw puzzle. It had many more features than the series of puzzles they now sell. Anyway, the following is the developers (Fly Games) introduction to the game:

The game features over 100 pictures of different genres. Beautiful sceneries, wild animals, city streets and many other views – you will find all of this in Christmas Puzzles. You can also choose the necessary difficulty level matching your mood. Got a short break at work? Assemble a small 50-piece puzzle. Want toThe goal of the game is simple. You will have to combine small puzzle pieces into a large colorful picture. You can also choose the necessary difficulty level matching your mood. This exciting game will be enjoyed by children and adults alike. A simple puzzle helps you improve attention, logic, memory and imagination. The game also has a piece rotation mode.
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Reference accessed HERE on 31st Dec 09

The Game:

You get loads of images to choose from, some of which I’ve posted here in this comment; with themes that complement the Christmas period (We’ve still got three days of Christmas left) You have to scroll through the images to select what you want. There is no facility to add new images and it seems like you can’t add images manually as all the images found in the games installed folder are of a format I’ve never heard of before (Box). Once you’ve chosen the image you wish to create a puzzle with you select the difficulty level. There are three of those; Easy, Medium and Hard. The easy puzzles can probably be completed in 10 to 20 minutes, or even faster if you utilise the ghost image which is an exact fit to the puzzle image (see the second image of Tower Bridge below). You can further increase the difficulty by allowing all pieces to rotate. Once this is done you can start solving the puzzle. There are several buttons that allow you to perform certain functions such as creating a ghost image within the puzzle area that gives you a framework to build your jigsaw; this can be made to look more solid or virtually disappear altogether, depending upon how easy you want to make the puzzle. There’s also a preview button that brings up an image to the top left of the playing area. This has three settings, the first being a small thumbnail and the final setting (number 3) fills about a third of the screen. You can show hints which will drag a piece of jigsaw to the correct location on the board, but then will spring back, so you have to watch where it is going otherwise you may lose the position, especially on the more difficult settings. There is a counter to tell you how many hints you’ve taken. There’s also a B key that makes the central pieces disappear so that all you can see are the border pieces.

If you want to leave a puzzle part done and start a new one you can do so and then return to the partially finished puzzle at a later date. Apart from the in game buttons there are several keyboard shortcuts which I’ve detailed below.

Useful keyboard keys:

F10…………………………Boss Key
Ctrl + A………………….Select All pieces
Ctrl + S………………….Select All Border
Ctrl + D………………….Select All unsolved
Esc………………………….Back to game menu

Features:

• 73 built-in levels and many more available for download.

• 3 difficulty levels

• Simple and intuitive controls

• Various puzzle shapes

• Classic rotation of puzzle pieces

• Interactive hints

Problems with the game?:

If you have trouble getting the game to work try downloading the demo from the developers site. You can get it HERE The activate file will register that demo as well as the set up file we get. The advantage of using the demo from Fly games is you get a desktop and Start Menu/Programs shortcut plus an uninstaller as well. That should solve the problems some are having being able to find the executable once installed.

You can download the demo from the following link:

http://fly-games.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=45&Itemid=30

Images:

You can see around 40 images, most of which are from the jigsaw images by following the link below:

http://s571.photobucket.com/albums/ss160/Whiterabbit04/Christmas%20puzzle/?albumview=slideshow

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:

Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista

Processor 500 Mhz or better

64 Mb RAM

25 Mb of hard drive space

8 Mb of video memory

Music:

If you don’t like the intro or in game music you can easily change it for any of your MP3 collection. There is no file conversion needed because the file used by the developer is also MP3.

If you’ve installed the game to its default location you should find the music files by following the path:

C:\games\puzzle\Christmas Puzzle\MUSIC (this path may be different depending upon where you installed last weeks game. however the last part of the path is the same (i.e. Christmas Puzzle\Music)

You should rename the files you are using to replace the original to the same names as the originals otherwise they won’t be recognized

Conclusion:

Today’s game giveaway is a functional jigsaw puzzle with enough Christmas themed images to keep you going for a couple of months or longer, depending upon which difficulty level you play on. I do think the images were a little limited compared to last weeks offering, too many images of presents and not enought scenes from Christmas cards. snow bound villages and glittering lights would have been nice; still, theres a reasonable selection of images with the yuletide theme to them. The main disappointments with this game was the inability to add additional images to the stock already there, the lack of any alternative jigsaw shapes, the often annoying habit of the pieces to jump slightly out of place when you locked a couple of pieces together and the ability to change the number of pieces from very few, which would be ideal for children to thousands for the die hard jigsaw fan. Despite these omissions I still think the game is worth 7 out of 10. It has come a little late for this Christmas, but I’m sure some will enjoy solving the puzzles out of season.

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Alternative Games:

I posted the following link last week, but just in case you missed last weeks game or you didn’t get the chance to follow the link, here it is again.

There are hundreds of jigsaw puzzles available for free via the internet. This
link to Caimans leads you to just over a hundred different Jigsaw puzzle games all of which are free.

Thanks to Naomi who suggested we visit Jigzone last week. You can find loads of free jigsaw puzzles:

http://www.jigzone.com/

Copmom suggested http://www.brainsbreaker.com/. It’s not free, but you can create puzzles that you can send onto friends as copmom does. The program is actually very good with the ability to create puzzles with many more pieces than todays game. Also you can upload your own images and use different interlocking pieces plus other features.

I really liked last week’s offering and like this one as well. I will, however, be changing the music ASAP. Thanks for the instructions as always WR.

As usual with freestanding games you will have to create your own shortcut. The application name is the same as last week’s so you will have to change the shortcut name as well.

I do like the fact that this one shows a gallery as well as thumbnails of the next and previous puzzle pictures, something last week’s did not do.

Since I am a major jigsaw fan this should make my family happy as I will no longer be taking over the diningroom table for days with my puzzles

Hope everyone had safe & happy holidays and a big thanks again to GGAOTD and Whiterabbit for all his hard work.