Lines Deluxe For iPhone Produces Many Hours of Puzzling Fun

Lines Deluxe [rating: 4.5/5]

Finding myself reviewing yet another variation on the classic 3+ item match game I thought I would be short on inspiration to describe such a repeated concept. However Lines Deluxe from Colorbox proved to be a great addition to the flooded genre with twist on the style.

So if you’ve ever played this type of game you would not need any help on understanding what you need to do, however, for those of you who are living under a rock a brief description would be this. Simply get a horizontal line of matching pieces and they disappear, repeat, repeat, repeat until you can’t move any more pieces and it’s game over and time to compare your score to not only your previous scores but also the global leader-boards.

Lines Deluxe iPhone Puzzle GameWith that being said, lets get into a little more detail! Lines Deluxe is played on a 9 x 9 grid and you start with a handful of playing pieces randomly scattered across the it. The playing pieces consist of a range of brightly colored spheres with geometric shapes on them. To align the pieces your only option is to move the existing pieces with new pieces add to the board each time you move a piece without it resulting in the completion of a line of spheres.

The pieces that are going to appear after the next move are high-lighted on the playing area so that you can use that as a guide as to where your next move should be. You are limited in moving your pieces only to spaces that you can get to without jumping over any other pieces and that’s where your forward thinking will come into play as you try to ensure that the lines you are building don’t get blocked off.

The simplest thing to do is to create lines of 5 shapes, however, while this is relatively easy to do the rewards are limited in that you will only score 5 points and no power ups. You can complete lines up to and including 9 playing pieces and the bigger the lines the bigger the rewards. From a points perspective you’ll get 5, 10, 15, 20 & 25 points for each additional sphere you can add to your line and then progressively better and better power-ups too.

Lines Deluxe iPhone Puzzle Game_3Power-ups include the ability to destroy a single sphere, the eight spheres surrounding the power-up sphere, all pieces in the same line both horizontally and vertically and the ability to destroy all the playing pieces of one color. The power-up balls can only move in the same way as the standard playing pieces so again it’s key to ensure that you don’t get them blocked in. Use them well though and you’ll soon be racking up big scores and preventing the premature end to your game.

The graphics, animations and sound effects all look polished and working well together and makes Lines Deluxe great to look at as well as great to play.

The games are split into two modes and three styles. The two modes to choose from are Classic and Extreme, Extreme includes the power-up options while Classic does not. The three styles are Endurance, just you and your tactics, Time Race where you play against the clock and finally Tactic where extra initial pieces are added to the grid to make things a little more difficult for you. All in all you have 6 different games styles all of which have there own local and global high score boards for you to rank yourself.

Despite the number of similar titles available in the App Store I found Lines Deluxe to be an addictive puzzler with all of the basics working together to produce a quality game that produces many hours of puzzling fun. The satisfaction of clearing a line of 9 spheres is something that keeps me coming back for more over and over again.

Price: $.99 as of Jan 03, 2010 (iTunes Store Link)
Version reviewed 1.0.0

The Good

  • Simple game beautifully executed
  • Use you brain, not your reactions
  • Online scoreboards

The Not So Good

  • No multi-player mode
  • No social networking integration

Reviewed by: Craig Willis

Lines Deluxe Official iPhone/iPod touch Trailer

2 Comments on “Lines Deluxe For iPhone Produces Many Hours of Puzzling Fun”

  1. billy

    I bought this game some days ago, it's really nice and fun. Love the comments “Use you brain, not your reactions” :D. Trying to get the top on global list board in this game.

  2. billy

    I bought this game some days ago, it's really nice and fun. Love the comments “Use you brain, not your reactions” :D. Trying to get the top on global list board in this game.

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