PEGBJRE: ECON-Elemental Connection and RYB
COLOURS. PUZZLES. BOTH.
ECON-Elemental Connectiond is a virtual board game made by solo indie dev Merlandese, whom some may recall from the earlier bundle title ‘Last Word’. This title is also an original design by Merlandese, who had created the physical version back in the early 2000s. So what exactly is the objective with these colourful squares?
Players square off (hehehe) against another, either an AI or a live opponent, with the goal of gaining the most points as possible. To do so, players must utilize one of the two pieces they are given and place them on the board connecting to another. These pieces can be rotated to ensure that whichever direction the player thinks is best can be achieved. When placed, each side that matches a colour is incrementally worth more points, so matching 2 sides of one’s added square nets the player 3 points (1 + 2). Mismatching a side automatically voids any points that side can give and instead adds a negative to that score instead. There are certain bonus points that can be awarded as well under certain circumstances. Some walls will be coated in a specific colour, and matching the wall with the square will net an extra bonus point for the trouble. The full coloured squares are also unique, for they double the amount of points gained when matched, making them the wombo combo to pull out and match a 3 sider for 12.
Of course, getting that sweet 12 points in one turn isn’t easy. With the limit of only two pieces, it’s really challenging to set up consistent ‘combos’ without having to risk the next piece being a complete dude; after all, all pieces gained are randomized. Since players go back and forth, it is also very easy for the other player to simply place a piece there that matches well enough and gain the 6 points, or worse, intentionally blocks it for 0. ECON is a simple game of strategy after all, and ensuring that the opponent cannot read through the moves created is important to win.
There are little ways to customize the board, from different layouts to colourbind options for accessibility, but at it’s core ECON is a simple PVP puzzle title within the realms of Blockus. It’s fun to come up with new ways to get the pieces to align just right, and since the opponent’s score is hidden there’s no way of knowing who has won until the end (unless you keep score yourself, if you’re in to that). Challenge your friends, challenge strangers online, or challenge your computer and see how well you can colour coordinate within 20–30 minutes of gameplay. Even if you lose, you still end the game with a really cool mural, which is a bonus I didn’t expect until I saw it.
Now if only the AI hadn’t placed that one that didn’t match.
RYB is a minimalist puzzle game is the first title made by indie dev FLEB, whom has won quite a few accolades from this and future titles. Toying with the genre, players will be attempting to return the colours to the shapes of each puzzle, with the only clues being little coloured circles within the shapes.
So, those little coloured dots are the only clues players get. What they mean is actually correlated to the number of sides that the shape is touching, so a shape with 1 blue dot has one shape touching it that needs to be blue. Think in terms of minesweeper how the number explains how many mines are touching the square clicked, only without diagonals — the faces need to be flush with each other (the above picture should help). It requires utilizing process of elimination as one goes, as by slowly narrowing down what can’t be the colour of a certain shape players can determine the actual colour. Of course, messing up is going to happen with this style of visual-logic puzzle, so players are given 3 lives to work with. Click on a shape with the wrong colour, and lose a life; lose all three and the whole collage is wiped to start over.
I won’t lie, I didn’t fully get it at first. I read the tagline of a ‘minesweeper-meets-sudoku’, but for some reason I didn’t fully understand the rules. The minimalist tutorial with few words was actually super useful, but it didn’t seem to click into my head the first time I witnessed it; instead, I spent the first few puzzles thinking that the dotted colours were a weight of sorts. Thankfully, the first puzzle can be repeated, and the second time through the beautiful splitting of the colours clicked in my head properly, and I went to work solving this clever little sequence. It’s actually quite ingeniously simple in its execution, bringing the colours together, separating them to the neighbouring shapes and materializing the dots together. Some like to see minimalism as a lack of communication, but this is definitely a point against that idea.
RYB does say much, for it doesn’t need to; the game is its own explanation. The colours get added over time to increase the difficulty, but it never feels as if it is intentionally obtuse. Every solution is a mind game, similar to sudoku; simply piecing together the possibilities and acting upon the solution within the brain. There’s not much else to say; if you like logic puzzles that can be played anywhere (it’s on mobile, nice) and don’t take long to catch on to, this is definitely one to play.
