[iOS] Puzzle Craft

Farm and mine you way towards an impressive imperial castle!

Brought to you by Chillingo, Puzzle Craft is a free iOS app that involves one simple game mechanic that requires more planning than you’d expect.

In Puzzle Craft, all you need to do is drag your finger across at least three matching tiles in order to collect resources. Sound simple enough? It is for the first few buildings you create.

As you level up and unlock new buildings, however, the variety of resources that construction requires increases. Resources also have different tiers. While wheat is plentiful and easy to collect, carrots for soup and apples for pie are much harder to come by. In order to see them crop up in your farms, you’ll have to build specific areas such as the orchard. After that, you’ll have to match anywhere from eight to ten wheat tiles to grant a single carrot tile. Match a lot of carrots and you’ll get a single apple. Keep in mind that three is the bare minimum for resource-collection.

Preventing you from callously dragging your finger all over the screen are rat and wolf tiles. The former will eat one of your plant-based tiles (wheat, carrots, apples) after a set amount of turns, while the latter is partial towards farm animals (chickens, pigs, and cows).

Of course, there are ways of making it easier to obtain high-tier resources. With the right amount of food and ore, you can hire workers who lower yield quotas. Sooner or later, it should only take you three wheat tiles to have a carrot tile drop down from the farming gods.

But if putting in the time and effort to collect resources isn’t working out for you, Puzzle Craft does have an in-game currency that can be used to purchase goods once you’ve established a market. (And yes, you can bolster your virtual funds with real money.)

Between farming for food and mining, the latter of which requires rations, there is a lot to do in Puzzle Craft.

A recent update has also introduced a treasure chest feature which involves even more strategic planning. Unlocking a chest requires that you connect a map through a random number of tiles to the chest. It’s not that easy when the lock demands sixteen apples from you!

Conclusion

Puzzle Craft is an excellent time-killer and possesses a lot more depth than one might expect. With attractive graphics and cheery background tunes, you won’t be able to put it down after only one harvest.