Conceptis Fill-a-Pix Review
PROS
- The smart guide helps streamline the experience.
- A great feeling of accomplishment upon solving a puzzle.
CONS
- Hefty price tag for additional puzzle packs.
- Can be quite brain stumping and frustrating while looking for that elusive one move that will allow you to continue.
VERDICT
Fill-a-pix is a no frills logic puzzle experience that should please puzzle aficionados but might alienate casual fans.
- Full Review
- App Store Info
[Editor's Note: Apologies for the video being unavailable for so long - YouTube is currently updating their back end again and it seems some features are missing at this time. We've found a work-around for now and hope this won't be an issue again soon!]
Earlier we reviewed Prismapix, a puzzle game where the player uses minesweeper-like clues to know what tiles are safe to uncover a picture on and which are not. That game was based on a simpler kind of logic puzzle, and that's exactly what we have here with Fill-a-pix. There's a grid full of numbers. Some are black spaces, others are not, and it's up to your ingenuity to use the clues given to you to find out which are which (and at the end you get a picture).
On starting, the control for this game seems quite cumbersome. You have to drag the red icon over to each individual square and tap to either turn it black or put a cross through it. There is a smart-fill cursor that makes everything a little easier and soon you'll wonder how you did without it. When you see a number on the board, it corresponds to how many black squares are in the three by three grid it's in the center of. What the smart-fill cursor does is if there is only one possible answer for filling the grid either with black or crosses, one touch will do the job for you. This is especially handy for the zeros and nines which should be your first port of call when tackling a puzzle (although you can turn on an option to auto-fill these at the start of a level).
Why would you want to auto-fill anything you may ask. Well some of these puzzles are huge. The first few start off small but before long you're traversing monumental canvases of numbers and white squares. The auto-fill takes some of the pressure off and also gives some good starting points when approaching these behemoths.
Each stage has one solution and one way to uncover it. Especially until the game clicks, this can lead to a lot of staring at the numbers on screen wondering what could be the next move (and of course in most cases when this happens, it's something simple). With this mind and the bare bones approach to these puzzles, this is really not for casual puzzle fans. These grids require dedication, and this will appeal to a certain kind of puzzle lover. Still, the first two packs of the game are free so it might be worth your while to give it a go and see if uncovering these pixelated images becomes engaging and addictive.
Screenshots
