Brand new from Yoshio Ishii of Nekogames, creator of the Hoshi Saga series, comes a simple mahjong-based puzzle game called Slidon. With a little mouse-based grace, your only goal in Slidon is to push tiles around a grid to form matching pairs of two or more. When like tiles meet, they vanish. You have a limited number of moves to complete each stage, so keep your tile shoving in check and study the board carefully.
To slide tiles, click and hold the left mouse button above one and move the mouse a bit. Arrows will appear in the direction(s) you can slide the tile, just move the cursor over and release. For tiles to disappear they must come to rest next to each other, meaning you can't send one flying past its match and expect it to disappear. And you can only slide tiles that aren't locked in by other pieces on the board.
The real fun begins when you factor in the delete option at the bottom of the screen. Each level lets you remove a limited number of tiles by simply pointing and clicking. You can only destroy tiles you can slide, so forget about digging to the bottom of the pile. It comes in handy in a pinch and adds a bit of unique strategy to the game.
A good puzzle game with an elegant presentation. There are only a handful of levels now, which is unfortunate, but it's a lot of fun while it lasts.
Nice game.
I was a bit disappointed that there doesn't seem to be a bonus for setting up chain reactions - sliding a tile against the bottom of a pile that drops the tile above against its pair (etc.), or for setting up triple or quad removes instead of just pairs. I think that would have given an enjoyable added depth to the puzzle.
Still a lot of fun though - thanks JohnB
The only thing I don't like in this game is the angle, it's hard to see some of the symbols and I shouldn't have to move my cursor over the tile and look at the right side of my screen to see what it is. It should have a top down view.
Very nice. Simple idea, superbly executed!
Matching 3 at once inadvertently really makes this a lot harder, it forces you to use up your deletes.
what juv3nal said. Actually, it seems like avoiding triple matches is part of the strategy, oddly enough.
Other issues: after you go through the ten levels, you get to do them again with fewer moves allotted -- which adds absolutely nothing to the game. Good players will seek to minimize their moves every time, not just when the game artificially minimizes it for them. I'd rather see just the ten levels and have the game keep track of your best score in terms of least moves.
Also, I've found that occasionally the game will not recognize a match -- I have to slide one tile out and then back -- a minor bug but killer if it happens after level 30.
Of course, just the fact that I played through level 30 should tell you how much I like it. (a lot!)
When the game doesn't recognize a match I've played with the pair of tiles. I've observed tiles disappearing or passing through the mismatch.
I think that while the graphics are overlapping in the same space, the collision detection and matching check thinks the pair are at different levels. It behaves like there is an empty space below one of the tiles.
This problem happened often enough (once every 4-5 boards) that ... well... this post is the last time that I'll ever think about this game.
MarkG:
I just did that (two-step) and it appears to give you more points... although the points mean nothing.
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