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| Gemsweeper | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Lobstersoft |
| Publisher(s) | Lobstersoft |
| Engine | Finity |
| Platform(s) | Windows |
| Release |
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| Genre(s) | Puzzle |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Gemsweeper is a thinking puzzle casual game developed by German studio Lobstersoft. During the game the player rebuilds the ruins of El Dorado by solving over 225 nonogram logic puzzles. [1]
In Gemsweeper the player assumes the role of a treasure hunter. When working in a museum putting together the pieces of a broken Olmec statue, the statue becomes alive and asks the player and old professor McGuffog to rebuild the mystical city of El Dorado. By solving over 225 puzzles, the player gradually rebuilds the ruins of the city and progresses his treasure hunter rank. [2]
The player has to uncover gems which are hidden behind some tiles and has to break all other tiles on the board. Numerical hints above and to the left of the board tell the player where the hidden gems are. Gems are picked up with a hand cursor whereas cursed tiles are smashed with a hammer. Jokers help if the player has to guess what's behind a tile.
Gemsweeper features an interactive tutorial to teach the player the basic principle of nonogram logic puzzles.
In Arcade Mode the gameplay is different from traditional nonograms. The puzzle does not contain a picture, but is abstract. As soon as a row is solved, a new row with different hints appear.
Derived from the Greek word for '5', and "domino", a pentomino is a polyomino of order 5, that is, a polygon in the plane made of 5 equal-sized squares connected edge-to-edge. When rotations and reflections are not considered to be distinct shapes, there are 12 different free pentominoes. When reflections are considered distinct, there are 18 one-sided pentominoes. When rotations are also considered distinct, there are 63 fixed pentominoes.
Puzzle video games make up a broad genre of video games that emphasize puzzle solving. The types of puzzles can test problem-solving skills, including logic, pattern recognition, sequence solving, spatial recognition, and word completion. Many puzzle games involve a real-time element and require quick thinking, such as Tetris (1985) and Lemmings (1991).
A puzzle is a game, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, the solver is expected to put pieces together in a logical way, in order to arrive at the correct or fun solution of the puzzle. There are different genres of puzzles, such as crossword puzzles, word-search puzzles, number puzzles, relational puzzles, and logic puzzles. The academic study of puzzles is called enigmatology.
Nonograms, also known as Hanjie, Paint by Numbers, Picross, Griddlers, and Pic-a-Pix, and by various other names, are picture logic puzzles in which cells in a grid must be colored or left blank according to numbers at the side of the grid to reveal a hidden pixel art-like picture. In this puzzle type, the numbers are a form of discrete tomography that measures how many unbroken lines of filled-in squares there are in any given row or column. For example, a clue of "4 8 3" would mean there are sets of four, eight, and three filled squares, in that order, with at least one blank square between successive sets.
The Battleship puzzle is a logic puzzle based on the Battleship guessing game. It and its variants have appeared in several puzzle contests, including the World Puzzle Championship, and puzzle magazines, such as Games magazine.
Zork Zero: The Revenge of Megaboz is an interactive fiction computer game, written by Steve Meretzky over nearly 18 months and published by Infocom in 1988. Although it is the ninth and last Zork game released by Infocom before the company's closure, Zork Zero takes place before the previous eight games. Unlike its predecessors, Zork Zero is a vast game, featuring a graphical interface with scene-based colors and borders, an interactive map, menus, an in-game hints system, an interactive Encyclopedia Frobozzica, and playable graphical mini-games. The graphics were created by computer artist James Shook. It is Infocom's thirty-second game.
Perplex City was an alternate reality game (ARG) created by Mind Candy, a London-based developer in 2005. Adrian Hon was the producer, designer and director of the game's first and only season, in which players searched for "The Receda Cube", an artifact of spiritual significance to the inhabitants of a fictional metropolis known as "Perplex City" and which has great scientific value. In the game, "The Cube" had been stolen and buried somewhere on Earth.
Challenge of the Ancient Empires!, also known as Ancient Empires is an educational computer game created by The Learning Company in 1990 for both MS-DOS and Macintosh. It is designed to improve history, logic, and problem solving skills in children ages 7 to 10.
Bejeweled 2 is a tile-matching puzzle video game developed and published by PopCap Games. Released as a sequel to Bejeweled, Bejeweled 2 introduces new game mechanics, such as Special Gems and extra game modes, along with new visuals and sounds.
A treasure map is a map that marks the location of buried treasure, a lost mine, a valuable secret or a hidden locale. More common in fiction than in reality, "pirate treasure maps" are often depicted in works of fiction as hand drawn and containing arcane clues for the characters to follow. Regardless of the term's literary use, anything that meets the broad definition of a "map" that describes the location of a "treasure" could appropriately be called a "treasure map."
Inca is a video game developed by Coktel Vision and published by Sierra On-Line in 1992. The game describes the conflict between Incas and Spaniards in a sci-fi, space opera setting. A sequel, Inca II: Wiracocha, was released in 1994.
Pandora's Box is a 1999 video game created by Alexey Pajitnov for Microsoft.
Picross DS (ピクロスDS) is a puzzle video game developed by Jupiter and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS handheld video game console. It is the second Picross game to be released by Nintendo in Europe and North America after Mario's Picross suffered a commercial failure in regions outside Japan, where many Picross games have been released for several Nintendo consoles. Like other Picross games, it presents the player with a series of nonogram logic puzzles to solve. It was first released in Japan, and was later released in North America, Europe and Australia.
Minesweeper is a logic puzzle video game genre generally played on personal computers. The game features a grid of clickable tiles, with hidden "mines" scattered throughout the board. The objective is to clear the board without detonating any mines, with help from clues about the number of neighboring mines in each field. Variants of Minesweeper have been made that expand on the basic concepts, such as Minesweeper X, Crossmines, and Minehunt. Minesweeper has been incorporated as a minigame in other games, such as RuneScape and Minecraft's 2015 April Fools update.
Forbidden Island is a cooperative board game developed by Matt Leacock and published by Gamewright Games in 2010. Two to four players take the roles of different adventurers, moving around a mysterious island and looking for hidden treasures as the island sinks around them. All players win if they find all the hidden treasures and they all make it back to the helicopter and fly away, and they all lose if they cannot.
Sea of Darkness is the 32nd installment in the Nancy Drew point-and-click adventure game series by Her Interactive. Players take on the first-person view of fictional amateur sleuth Nancy Drew and must solve the mystery through interrogation of suspects, solving puzzles, and discovering clues. There are two levels of gameplay, Amateur and Master sleuth modes, each offering a different difficulty level of puzzles and hints, however neither of these changes affect the actual plot of the game. It is the last game to feature Lani Minella as the voice of Nancy Drew, and is also the last game to use Her Interactive's proprietary game engine. The next game, Midnight in Salem, uses Unity.
Legend of Grimrock II is an action role-playing video game developed and published by Almost Human. It is the sequel to the 2012 title Legend of Grimrock, and was released for Microsoft Windows in October 2014, and later for OS X in March 2015.
Karuba is a tile-laying race game for 2–4 players, designed by Rudiger Dorn and published by HABA in 2015. Each player has 4 explorers, which move through the jungle on the player's private board in order to discover treasure and reach hidden temples. The game was nominated for the 2016 Spiel Des Jahres award.
Murder by Numbers is a video game developed by Mediatonic and published by The Irregular Corporation. It was released on March 5, 2020 for Nintendo Switch and Windows, and on March 23, 2021 for Stadia. The game is a hybrid of visual novels with nonogram-style logic puzzles to progress the story.
Puzzle Quest is a series of puzzle video games where tile-matching serves as the combat for a role-playing video game. The first game was released in 2007: Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, a spin-off of the Warlords series of turn-based strategy games. It has since expanded to other licensed content. Puzzle Quest: The Legend Returns, was released in 2019.
