Need a Challenge, Try Tangram for WP7

Call me out of touch, but shooting ducks, birds, balls or fruit gets tiring pretty quickly for me. But present me with a challenge, where I can take the time to think through a solution, and I suddenly feel more relaxed while my brain is still getting a workout. I had an app similar to this on my old Pocket PC and was glad to find Tangram by Hanno in the Marketplace a couple days ago.

The Main Menu is a bit drab but the game works beautifully. When you open a new puzzle you are presented with the prerequisite seven objects, along with the sample in the lower right corner. The challenge, of course, is to arrange the shapes in a way to match the sample. You can freely move the shapes all around the screen and pinch zoom in and out as needed. The screen goes black (scared the heck out of me) for a few seconds when opening, without any wait timer, but everything moves smoothly once you are working in a puzzle. Here are the basics for navigating:

– Tap a tile (shape) to move

– Double tap a tile to rotate (clockwise only)

– Long tap on the parallelogram to flip

– Double tap on the sample to rotate it

– Long tap on the sample shows this part of the solution (hey, that’s cheating!)

– Long tap in a free area hides the solution

– Double tap on an empty area zooms to see all tiles

– Drag in a free area moves all tiles

– Zoom screen with two fingers (pinch to zoom)

– Cancel selection checks for solution of the tangram

Once you have solved the puzzle, just tap a free area and you are rewarded with a simple thumbs up. After exiting the app, you can pick up where you left off by tapping Last Tangram from the Home screen or New Tangram to start fresh. One little trick I found was that you can zoom out enough to lay your shape over the sample and see how it will fit into final solution. The full version has over 250 templates, so it should keep you occupied for a long time. And if you can memorize the solution to that many puzzles I suggest you hop on the next plane to Vegas and cash in. The Free Trial is fully functional, but limited to only 5 puzzles. Thank you Hanno for that.

In the developers words:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can try out the Trial or purchase Tangram for $1.99 in Zune Marketplace here. Note, that the link will open Zune Marketplace.