One of the best ways to kill time with your mobile device is to play puzzle games, and you know it. I mean, who hasn’t played a puzzle game on their mobile before? Every one of you has probably played it at least once.
Some of you might think that the puzzle games are one of the most boring genres out there, but it is far from the truth. Just when you thought you saw everything, someone always steps up and throws us new ideas.
Sigma for iPhone and iPod touch is exactly like that. The Match 3 concept isn’t anything new at all, but with the twist of controlling two separate columns, the game definitely has its own ground to impress puzzle gamers out there. It might take us awhile to explain all the rules, so let us YouTube you.
Got the idea? Good.
You basically use two fingers (usually thumbs for the two columns), and match three blocks with same colors to explode. You can chain combos by matching sames colors continuously, and there are special items that can lead to multiple explosions. Once the player reaches a certain level, the game moves on to the next stage.
The gameplay itself is solid. Though players usually start out by just matching colors, as the they get into the game, they discover there’s more to it than just moving blocks around. The player learns how to see a couple of steps ahead, trying to chain combos or beat the timer to advance to the next level. It was a cool experience because I was just playing to check what the game is all about, but ended up playing for about an hour without taking any breaks. It’s like when Neo sees the Matrix with green jibberish. If I really have to pick the downside of this game, it was kind of hard to chain the combos by matching the same colors over and over again. Maybe easier chaining or simply more explosions might have made things a bit more interesting. Just a maybe though.
Graphics and audio are awesome, especially the designs. As the player progresses to the next stage, the entire design of blocks change, and it’s totally sweet on the eyes. And background music and sound effects are good. For the music, the game actually supports a “my music” option, which allows me to play my own MP3s that are stored on my iPod touch. When I tried the “my music” option, it literally used the MP3 player on the iPod touch. The music worked just fine, but when I paused the game, my MP3s wouldn’t stop with the game because the music was controlled by the iPod touch, not with Sigma. Even with the “lock” button on the iPod touch , my MP3s wouldn’t stop. A small, useful yet possibly annoying “feature” the game has.
Multiplayer is another fun way to enjoy the game. The multiplayer mode is available via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth with no over-the-internet multiplayer mode, but it’s still great fun. Sigma supports the “Plus+” system so you can track down leaderboards and scores with ease. A very cool social play network system indeed.
Playing Sigma was a real fun experience for me. Since I’m right-handed, I was concentrating on the right column, utilizing my right thumb most of the time. But as soon as I realized that I can use both side of my brains for this game, Sigma literally felt like a whole different game. I’m not sure if everyone will experience what I went through, but whether you’re crazy like me or not, Sigma is a very enjoyable, easy-to-learn game that can easily kill your time.
For now, the introductory price is $0.99, and we can only guess that the price might go up soon. Grab ‘em while you can (and that’s what she said).
Our Score: 9 /10
Cool gameplay mechanics. Once you start seeing the whole matrix of Sigma, that’s when the fun begins! Impressive.
