Casual Review

Full Review

It’s all too rare that we see a really new gameplay dynamic that is both simple and fun. That’s why we were pleasantly surprised to open up Mirror Mix-up from Pi Eye Games and find something completely new. Of course, with some pretty original games like Sweetopia and Arklight under their belt, it should come as no surprise that a game from these guys is going to have some neat stuff in it.

The game itself is shockingly simple. You are given a large picture which has been cut apart into large blocks that have been flipped horizontally and vertically. You must solve the puzzle by selecting areas of the picture and twisting them horizontally or vertically. The cool part is that you can select any part of the picture and flip it in any direction, making the puzzles quite complex. The difficulty comes in the goal and limit moves. The goal is the minimum number of moves it can be done in, and the limit is the maximum number of moves you can make. While you can usually solve the puzzle within the limit, solving it in the minimum moves can be very tricky. And if they are both too hard for you, you can turn off the limits and make as many moves as you would like.

Moreover, Mirror Mix-up has some more game modes, such as the Custom (where you can use your own pictures, and set the difficulty of the mixes), Memory (where it mixes the picture up in front of you, challenging you to fix the image from memory) and Impossible mode, which we’ll keep a secret- we can’t spoil all the surprises. The whole game is as long as you want it to be, with 150 levels to solve and 200 unlockable bonus levels. When you count in the custom levels you build yourself, you could play pretty much indefinitely.

While the game is extremely sparse on frilly features like power-ups and story (none of either), it doesn’t suffer from the lack of them. Quite the opposite, it lets you get right into the game without fooling around with unnecessary foolishness. There is an MP3 feature that lets you listen to your own music, and you can also set the game to high resolution if you have a more powerful computer (you likely do) – which allows the player to get the best experience out of the main game.

In all, we were impressed. A simple, clean little game, done right, and presented in a way that allows players to customize however the want. It’s definitely going to keep you amused for an evening or two – and if you are in the mood to look through your old digital photo albums, that could make it substantially more interesting indeed. Go check it out!

Review by Nick Kojima