Good Puzzle: Castles

In Brief

Good puzzle: Castles is a simple jigsaw puzzle with twelve castle puzzles to solve. It is from the same series as Ultimate Puzzles Nature , Ultimate Puzzles: Animals 2 and Ultimate Puzzles Countries that were given away on the 1st, 24th and the 25th February respectively.

The Game

Good Puzzle: Castles is a simple jigsaw puzzle, created using the unity engine. When you open the game you will see the level selection screen with access to 12 jigsaw puzzles. You can choose any of these despite it saying they are closed. There doesn't appear to be any significance to this as even once you've completed a puzzle where it says closed doesn't change, so don't know what this is for or means? Once a puzzle is completed the timer does not stop. If you return to the level screen then return to the puzzle it resets itself and leaves no indication that you've previously completed the game; also, there is no profile set up, and no progress stats included with the game.

You can select from three languages, English, Russian and Chinese via the flag button in the top right hand section of the game screen. You can also turn off the pleasant music via the speaker button next to the flag, or close the game via the X button.

Once you've selected a puzzle you will see a black and white image of the puzzle, which you can see in colour if you hover your mouse over the artists palette in the top right hand corner of the puzzle. If you then click on the palette it will leave the image in colour, which can make it a tad harder to place the puzzle pieces because once a piece has been placed it disappears into the coloured image with no definable gaps/edges between pieces that have been placed and those that have still to be placed. That said, because you can see all of the image, it's easy enough to place most of the pieces just by matching up the piece with the image. Once the image is in colour, you can change it back to black and white temporarily by hovering over the artists palette, but it won't change it permanently. One your mouse pointe leaves the palette, it will return to the coloured image.

Each puzzle is made up of an invisible 4 x 5 piece grid; once you've place any puzzle piece in the correct position, they will lock in place. If you place any puzzle piece in the wrong position, when you let go of it, it glows red and will return to the outside perimeter of the puzzles image.

Overall, Good Puzzle: Castles is a 'very' easy jigsaw to complete, especially with only 12 puzzles and each puzzle comprising of only 20 square puzzle pieces. Also, the inability to get rid of the puzzles image either in black & white or colour and the simple shape of each puzzle piece makes it even easier to complete quickly. An experienced jigsaw player can easily complete the whole game in less than 25 minutes. Because these puzzles are very simple they are probably only suitable for younger children between the ages of 6 to 8 (maybe with adult supervision).

For what the game includes, I think the developer is asking too much for this puzzle game at £1.69 over on Steam; though, at the moment it is 76% off (i.e. £0.40) HERE, which I reckon is a more reasonable price for such a short and easy puzzle. Also, the developer is selling a DLC that includes all of the 12 images as wallpapers for £3.99 , though that is 90% off at the moment (i.e. £0.39/$0.50) HERE . If the whole series were to be combined into one game (i.e. all 4 puzzles and including the wallpapers), it would seem a much fairer price (in my opinion); especially considering that there are free jigsaw programs available online that are much better and more challenging than this.

Okay, we get this game this today. Also, as mentioned in a previous jigsaw giveaway, there was a particular jigsaw given away thirteen years ago called Infinite Jigsaw Puzzle, that included the ability to change the shape and number of pieces from a child friendly 24 piece simple shape to over a thousand complex shaped pieces (there were a variety of shapes you could choose from); plus, you could categorise and add as many of your own images to the game as you wished; (I still have the game on one of my older computers)

You can see a couple of videos of game play HERE, (posted by the YouTuber BatPrince on the 13th Nov 2020) and another via the Steam store page HERE. Also, you can see several Steam community members short and mainly positive reviews HERE.

The latest game from Epic Games. is Surviving Mars, a sci-fi city builder all about colonizing Mars and surviving the process. It includes one free DLC pack, (Mysteries Resupply Pack). There are several DLC packs available for this game, e.g. Colony Design Set, Stellaris Dome Set, Marsvision song Contest, Space Race, Green Planet, Project Laika, In-Dome Building Pack, Deluxe Upgrade Pack and of course the Season Pack DLC; oddly, the season pack isn't available via the Steam version, though it may not be showing on my Steam client because I already have all of the Season pack content, which includes most of the DLC packs mentioned previously. You can get 50% off for each DLC pack over on Epics site at the moment while the base game is free.

On Thursday 18th from 4pm (UK time) we will be getting The Fall; that includes engaging puzzles and tense action. You are ARID, the AI onboard a mark-7 combat suit. The human pilot encased within the suit is unconscious. You must find a way to follow protocol and save his life. It won the 2014 Game of the Year for best story.

Please see Delenn's threads over in the game discussion forums for Steam and Non Steam freebies HERE and HERE respectively. It’s worth adding these to your favourites and checking regularly for available freebies. Most are only free for a specific time. If you miss the deadline you’ll often miss out on some decent indie, arcade and AAA games. Once added to your account, they are yours to keep. I sometimes post more details about these freebies, usually including images and sometimes videos of the games being given away for free, but usually only after Delenn has posted links to the freebies first. (As always thanks for your time and effort Delenn, it's very much appreciated despite not thanking you enough.

Notes on Security

I scanned a zipped copy of the installed game and it found zero hits from 58 antimalware engines. The downloaded executable may include some low level adware that only opens your browser to Falcowares home page after the game has installed, but does not inject any malware into your system. When your browser is opened to Falcowares home page it earns them some money, part of which is given to the developer of the game for allowing the game to be given away free. You can see the results of the scan via the following link:


https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/52ad7a4ce10cab952d060fd55761a9fc2ecbedee33a0a926203be969e346ef98/detection

As always, too all community members, please stay safe in these uncertain times.