Numbrix, an addictive new puzzle game created by Marilyn vos Savant and developed by Threemagination, Inc., is now available through the app store. Featured in PARADE magazine in Sunday newspapers across the country, Numbrix has followed the success of other popular newspaper puzzle games, such as Sudoku, from print to the iDevice.
On its face, Numbrix (a mash-up of the words Number and Matrix) is a fairly simple game that requires no math skills other than the ability to count to 81. The player is presented with a 9 x 9 grid of squares, some of which are pre-filled with numbers in the 1-81 range. Your task is to fill in the rest of the numbers to create a chain that wraps around the grid. The chain must only follow horizontal or vertical paths. Each puzzle requires only logic to arrive at the unique solution, and a timer measures the speed with which you complete each puzzle. When you’ve correctly completed each puzzle, the numbers light up in snake-like fashion from 1 to 81 to indicate your success. You will then be asked if you’d like to submit your time to the global leaderboard for comparison with others.
Numbrix comes pre-loaded with 149 puzzles across three levels of difficulty: easy, medium, and hard. Numbrix will also check for new puzzles when connected to the internet and download any available puzzles to your iDevice, so even if you get through the pre-loaded puzzles, you will receive fresh puzzles weekly. At this time, we have 175 puzzles loaded on our iDevice.
Graphically, the game has a clean interface. The grid squares are not too small, nor will you need to do much scrolling. A translucent number pad pops up at the bottom of the screen to allow easy number input. When viewing the puzzle from its top line, the number pad covers the last two rows. Tap a square toward the bottom of the viewing space and the puzzle will autoscroll down to allow clear view of the bottom rows. To enter numbers, simply tap any empty square and punch in the number on the number pad. Repeat this process until all squares have been filled in.
We had two fairly minor concerns with the game. Our first is simply a preference issue. It would be nice if there was some way to drag your finger and auto-fill short chains of numbers with the next numbers in sequence. For instance, there are times where you might fill in 6 numbers in a row along the grid border. It would be nice to drag and auto-fill the numbers 42-47, rather than key in 42, tap the next square, key in 43, tap the next square, key in 44, etc. This could either be a multi-touch feature (hold auto-fill button with one finger while dragging the range with another) or perhaps a keypad button that you tap and then drag to highlight the range. Once you lift your finger, the auto-fill would enter the next sequential numbers and the single tap method would be re-enabled.
Our other concern was with the high scores list, though the Threemagination team has already addressed it. It appears that the high scores may have been compromised by people replaying the levels after solving them and keying in the numbers as quickly as possible based on their knowledge of the solution. For instance, the top score on many puzzles was about 1 minute, 10 seconds. With a 9 x 9 grid and 24 pre-filled squares, the player must enter 57 unique numbers into the grid, most of which are two-digits. This means that the top scorer was fully completing one square per second (typically requiring 4 taps each). This amount of time left no room for logical thought and problem-solving. The high scores list was, in effect, a fastest-finger list. The development team recently implemented some controls to prevent the aforementioned form of cheating. We hope that this change gives a more accurate representation of how quickly players are able to complete each puzzle without prior knowledge. We applaud the developers for moving so swiftly to reestablish the integrity of their product.
Threemagination has finally given us the opportunity to take our beloved Numbrix puzzle out of the newspaper and onto our iDevice, and they have implemented it very well. There is plenty of replayability, and the downloading of new puzzles keeps it fresh. Typically, Numbrix is priced at $4.99, though at the time of this review, the price has been cut to $2.99, a terrific deal for this 5-Dimple gem.
Numbrix gets our AppSmile 5-Dimple rating:
