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| In Which I Play A Story-Heavy Puzzle Game! |
The mobile game Wish Stone Nonogram from GameFox is a free-to-play puzzle game where you fill in images based on a set of numbers along a grid. I've covered a Nonogram style game before in Nonograms Katana, but this game is quite different in that it has two modes: Story and Free Play. I have only played the Story Mode, so far, but I understand that the Free Play mode gets quite massive...
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| Yes, that's a city on the back of a flying whale. Yes, that's important. |
Throughout the Story Mode, there are four major parts, each represented by a different character: A King, A Princess, An Adventurer, and what looks to be An Archaeologist. Each character advances the story along via several 5x5 boards of puzzles (25 puzzles per chapter). I believe there are nine or ten chapters per size of each game (10x10, 15x15, 20x20), and each is incredibly detailed. You're literally building the chapter's image with each puzzle solved!
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| It would seem that this version of the game had not yet introduced the Archaeologist character I have on mine! You make the image on the right out of different puzzles you solve. This is the King's first chapter rendered in 10x10 tiles! |
The story so far has been a tragedy. I'm nearly at the end of the Princess's part of the story and things have gone horribly wrong. It's a standard Monkey's Paw-style plot, but with a great deal of pathos and madness and love and loss and it's really quite engrossing! Who knew the reader would love a game where you get to read a short story after playing a bunch of fun levels?
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| Speaking of the levels... |
So you start the game with 10 hints. I've only used one and that was absolutely by mistake. You have 10 errors you can make per level, after which you start the level over. Errors are marked with a red X, and you can fill in empty spaces with gray X marks. Interestingly enough, you can place X's in error with impunity. Gray X's also appear, filling in gaps, when you place all of the tiles correctly in a row or column. As you can see from the example above (somewhat), the game is pretty simple. Where you see a black number, that's how many filled-in tiles there are in a row or column. Multiple numbers mean that there are spaces between runs of filled-in tiles. In a 10x10 puzzle, you'll usually be thrilled to see 10s or 9s because they're usually pretty easy to fill in. Especially 10s, which you literally just fill all the way in.
You solve your puzzles and eventually get your next chapter or character, learning more of the story as you go, and it's lovely.
The art is beautiful, the fantasy music that plays in the background is pleasant, and there is something addictive about playing these games! I have enjoyed every GameFox game I've downloaded, and while sometimes the ads, which appear between puzzles, can be annoying, I'm just glad that they get paid for their free game. So much effort goes into these interesting games that it would be awful if they didn't get paid.
Wish Stone is definitely a game I strongly recommend you download and play, if you have some time to sink into a story-driven puzzle game, like fantasy, and your fingers aren't too large. If you have sausage fingers, however, you're going to want to invest in a fine-tipped stylus or something, because 25x25 and 30x30 puzzles are brutal on the ol' fingertips...
Go Enjoy Something!
FC
