Suppose I were to hand you a 24-piece children's jigsaw puzzle. The picture's not important, just imagine whatever you want on there. If you want the Smurfs, you've got the Smurfs. If you want Bruce Lee, you've got him. You open the box, spread the pieces out on the table, and I say, "Go." So what's your reaction? Most likely, you'd be racing to get that puzzle together as quickly as you can. It's a simple puzzle, why shouldn't it be done fast? As you slap the final piece into place, you shout, "Done!" and look at me for the time.
"…What time? I don't have a stopwatch, I wasn't timing you… What did you want?"
Perhaps I'm spoiling a bit of the game here, but this is the basic premise behind Tonypa's (Pushori, Floribular) latest creation, Nosobow. To play, look at the set of colored tiles on the screen. Some of them have exact matches (without rotating), some don't. Your job is to eliminate the non-matching tiles from the screen by clicking on them. Removing all singletons from the board advances you to the next level where tiles are worth more points, but clicking a member of a pair puts you in jeopardy of losing the game.
By the way, there's no time limit. You have all the time in the world to complete each level. There are no buzzers waiting to go off, no bombs about to explode, and I'm not standing behind you with a bucket of ice water ready to be poured down your back when the clock strikes six. Nor should there be. Nosobow is a game of concentration with shades of a memory challenge thrown in, not a game of reaction times or quick thinking. But who says you won't make it one? It's only a matter of time before you begin to lose your patience with yourself and you start making hasty clicks, and you click the wrong tile.
Luckily, the game isn't over yet… maybe. A false click starts a randomizer, which can stop on a special tile that cuts your score in half and lets you continue playing, or on a tile that lets you continue scot-free, or on the dreaded "game over" tile. The three choices are equally weighted, so you have a two-thirds chance of continuing the game, but half of those times, it will cost you some of your hard-earned progress. So needless to say… it's best not to slip up.
Analysis: Behind Tonypa's brilliantly simple design lies a deviously intricate psychological game of self-pacing and concentration, which is pretty easy to get caught up in emotionally. Especially once you hit the higher stages, it's hard not to panic for a few moments when you click the wrong tile. Nosobow is a compelling game that will have you groaning in anguish every time you have to start back at square one.
I love this game, although it makes me moderately paranoid and crazy.
My basic strategy is to find a recognizable shape in one corner of the square and scan the other squares looking for a matching one.
My high score is 314 on level 10, after that I simply lost my patience.
This game totally sucked me in. I got to lvl 9 with 413. Everytime I got one wrong I practicaly held my breath wait to see what I'd get.
It might just be that I woke up too early this morning, but I found this game to be very relaxing. The removal of the timer in this kind of game was a brilliant idea.
This is a proper casual game - you can just play quickly until you make a mistake, or really try and get a high score.
I made it to level 13, but I was probably taking it too seriously! It's nice to just leave the game open in your browser and do a level every so often.
a useful tip (atleast for me) is to look at the shaded regions as boxes instead of looking for the lines just look for the same pattern of boxes.
Thank you for nice review :)
Like many times before, I did this game mostly by accident. I had a timer like all proper games have and I commented it out for testing. To my surprise, I still rushed through the game same way, even when there was no need anymore. So I thought it could be interesting to see how many people behave same way I did.
1719 - level 17
Wonderful game for a coffee shop on a rainy day! My mistakes were on the higher levels after I had checked and double checked and just couldn't see any more orphans. I would triumphantly click what just had to be the final one....and wasn't. Of course having other people's fingers jabbing at my screen didn't help *grin*
I really like the concept. However, I'm not sure that I like the random chance to lose. I like to keep track of my personal best, but its hard to compare when one time I lose on my first mistake and the next i get 2 passes and a half score before losing. I get that it's supposed to be casual and the lack of timer does just that. I think it's frustrating when I have a really good 'first go' without missing and think I've got a really good chance at getting to a late level and lose on the first chance, while other times I can screw up several times with little to no penalty.
I got half score and no penalty about 15 times before I finally got game over. Is it really a 1/3 chance?
Random numbers are funny, they become truely random only when served at large amounts. Yes, it is completely possible to escape game over 10 times within single game, yet when counted by hundreds and thousands each still has 1/3 chance.
this game is wonderful, but it needs a "restart" button. that way, you could just jump to the start if you don't like what you've done, or to skip over the "high scores" (which seems to take FOREVER sometimes to load.)
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