 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(March 2018) |
| Pandora's Box | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Microsoft Game Studios |
| Publisher(s) | Microsoft Game Studios |
| Designer(s) | Alexey Pajitnov |
| Platform(s) | |
| Release | |
| Genre(s) | Puzzle |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Pandora's Box is a 1999 video game created by Alexey Pajitnov for Microsoft. [2]
In the game, players must travel around the world to different cities solving various kinds of puzzles to capture the seven "tricksters" - Maui, Puck, Eris, Coyote, Monkey, Anansi and Raven. Each trickster has a challenge puzzle after finding all the missing box pieces, acquired by solving the puzzle with each piece behind it in each city. The location of the pieces is randomized each game. The game offers sporadic bonuses. Hints are used to find where one piece goes if the player needs help figuring it out. Free puzzle tokens solve puzzles for the player if needed. A free puzzle token is awarded for every ten puzzles solved. Some puzzles, if solved in a limited amount of time, grant the location of the piece or additional hint/puzzle token.
Most puzzle types in the game are variations on the basic concept of a tiling puzzle, and often involve famous paintings, statues, photos (usually from Corbis' archive) of notable places around the world, or other artifacts:
Towards the end of the game, as the difficulty ramps up, some puzzles get combined into being stages of one larger puzzle, e.g. the player must first solve a Rotascope puzzle, where the result of that puzzle is actually a Focus Point puzzle.
Pandora's Box won GameSpot 's "Puzzles and Classics Game of the Year" award. The editors wrote that it "proved that [Pajitnov] was more than just the king of the simple game." [3] It was a runner-up for Computer Games Strategy Plus 's 1999 "Classic Game of the Year" award and Computer Gaming World 's 1999 "Puzzle/Classics Game of the Year" award. [4] [5] The Electric Playground named it the best computer puzzle game of 1999. [6] As a result, the game was re-released in a "Puzzle Game of the Year Edition", containing an additional 50 puzzles. During the 3rd Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, Pandora's Box received a nomination for "Computer Family Entertainment Title of the Year" by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. [7]
Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov is a Russian computer engineer and video game designer who is best known for creating, designing, and developing Tetris in 1985 while working at the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre under the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union.
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.
Tetris is a puzzle video game created in 1985 by Alexey Pajitnov, a Soviet software engineer. It has been published by several companies for multiple platforms, most prominently during a dispute over the appropriation of the rights in the late 1980s. After a significant period of publication by Nintendo, the rights reverted to Pajitnov in 1996, who co-founded the Tetris Company with Henk Rogers to manage licensing.
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.
Tetrisphere is a puzzle video game developed by H2O Entertainment and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. It was released in North America on August 11, 1997, and in PAL regions in February 1998. The game, originally named Phear, was slated for release on the Atari Jaguar in early 1995, but was reworked into a Tetris game for the N64 after Nintendo obtained its publishing rights.
A sliding puzzle, sliding block puzzle, or sliding tile puzzle is a combination puzzle that challenges a player to slide pieces along certain routes to establish a certain end-configuration. The pieces to be moved may consist of simple shapes, or they may be imprinted with colours, patterns, sections of a larger picture, numbers, or letters.
ClockWerx is a puzzle video game created by Callisto Corporation that was released in 1995. The game was originally released by Callisto under the name Spin Doctor. Later, with some gameplay enhancements, it was published by Spectrum HoloByte as Clockwerx, which was endorsed by Alexey Pajitnov according to the manual. A 3DO Interactive Multiplayer version was planned but never released.
Hexic is a 2003 tile-matching puzzle video game developed by Carbonated Games for various platforms. In Hexic, the player tries to rotate hexagonal tiles to create certain patterns. The game is available on Windows, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S Windows Phone and the web. Many clones are available for Android and iOS. The game was designed by Alexey Pajitnov, best known as the creator of Tetris. While most earlier releases of the game were developed by Carbonated Games, the most recent version released for Windows and Windows Phone is developed by Other Ocean. The name is a portmanteau of the words "hectic" and "hexagon".
Tetris DS is a puzzle video game developed and published by Nintendo. It was released for the Nintendo DS on March 20, 2006, in North America, April 13, 2006, in Australia, April 21, 2006, in Europe, and April 27, 2006, in Japan. An installment of the Tetris franchise, the game supports up to ten players locally, and supported online multiplayer of up to four players using Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection prior to its discontinuation.
The Tetris effect occurs when people devote so much time and attention to an activity that it begins to pattern their thoughts, mental images, and dreams. It takes its name from the video game Tetris.
Tetris is a puzzle video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy in 1989. It is a portable version of Alexey Pajitnov's original Tetris and it was bundled with the North American and European releases of the Game Boy itself. It is the first game to have been compatible with the Game Link Cable, a pack-in accessory that allows two Game Boy consoles to link for multiplayer purposes. A remaster, Tetris DX, was released on the Game Boy Color in 1998. A Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console version of Tetris was released in December 2011, lacking multiplayer functionality. The game was released on the Nintendo Switch Online service in February 2023.
Magical Tetris Challenge is a puzzle game by Capcom for the Nintendo 64, Game Boy Color, and PlayStation. It is a version of Tetris featuring Disney characters. It is one of the few Nintendo 64 games to be entirely in 2D.
Casper is a series of action-adventure games based on the 1995 film of the same name. Two different games were released in 1996 and 1997 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, by different publishers, in different regions. A third game was released for the 3DO, Sega Saturn, PlayStation, and Game Boy Color, published by Interplay Productions. There was also a Game Boy game developed by Bonsai. A PC game, Casper: The Interactive Adventure, and a Game Boy Advance game, simply titled Casper, were released in 1997 and 2002 respectively serving as sequels.
Microsoft Entertainment Pack: The Puzzle Collection is a collection of 10 puzzle computer games developed by Mir - Dialogue and published by Microsoft Games. The creator of Tetris, Alexey Pajitnov, designed some of the games featured in the pack. It was released on CD-ROM for Windows 95. It was also bundled as part of the Microsoft Plus! Game Pack which was released after Windows Me.
A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work or art.
Tetris Classic is a 1992 puzzle video game developed and published by Spectrum HoloByte for DOS systems. It is an adaptation of the 1985 Soviet video game Tetris, which was first released in North America in 1988. Spectrum HoloByte subsequently developed a series of annual spin-off titles for Tetris, and intended to take advantage of improvements in computer technology since the original game's release; for Tetris Classic, they showcased the Video Graphics Array (VGA) standard via illustrations depicting scenes from Alexander Pushkin's poem Ruslan and Ludmila, as well as a soundtrack consisting of selections from Mikhail Glinka's opera adaptation of the poem. The game additionally includes competitive and cooperative two-player modes and an option to set a time limit on games. The game received mixed critical commentary; while reviewers appreciated the enhanced presentation and new multiplayer modes, they noted that the gameplay was unchanged from the original version.
A tile-matching video game is a type of puzzle video game where the player manipulates tiles in order to make them disappear according to a matching criterion. In many tile-matching games, that criterion is to place a given number of tiles of the same type so that they adjoin each other. That number is often three, and these games are called match-three games.
BreakThru! is a tile-matching puzzle video game released for the Windows and MS-DOS in 1994. It was created by Steve Fry for the Japanese company ZOO Corporation and published by Spectrum HoloByte, for the North American market.