It’s Mr. Pants!

Imagine that you have a sheet of graph paper. On this paper you have a picture composed by coloring the squares different colors. You have the ability to make the picture disappear by making the component pieces into complete squares and rectangles with the provided pieces. The Wikipedia page does a slightly better job of describing this concept.

Like most good puzzle games, it’s fairly difficult to describe how to play it without actually showing how to play it. Unfortunately, this is different from most puzzle games in that I could hardly stand to play it.

There are two modes: Marathon and Puzzle. Marathon tasks you with building squares and rectangles on an empty playfield, competing only for a high score. Puzzle is more of the thinking-man’s game, tasking you with the aforementioned picture-clearing. Both modes are bad in their own way.

I couldn’t stand to play Marathon mode for more than a couple of minutes. It was exceedingly difficult to formulate any kind of strategy. There is a large number of possible pieces that may appear, of varying shapes and sizes, and it was just beyond me to actually formulate any kind of strategy.

Puzzle mode is slightly more entertaining. You have a finite number of pieces to clear the playfield, and you must use all the pieces given. The problem is twofold: you have a limited amount of time to make your move, and in later levels you can’t see all the pieces you need to formulate a solution. Puzzle mode, by its nature, should allow you to have all the time you need to formulate your strategy, giving extra points for speedy play could be acceptable, but penalizing you for thinking is pretty lame. In later levels, the amount of pieces you need to solve a puzzle is greater than the pieces you can see, barring you from making the correct solution on your first attempt a fair amount of the time.

It was fun for a while, but the novelty of a game starring a poorly-drawn character wearing nothing but a large pair of underpants wore off quickly.

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