Ozzle wants to deceive you. Ozzle is bright and colorful, its fonts look like balloons, two big googley eyes watch you while you play, there's pink everywhere. But it's a puzzle game that will make you think and plan and execute only to realize you made a boneheaded move and could have done things much better. So, you try again, knowing you're smart enough to slide some bubbles around to match a stupid little pattern. All of this happens on the first or second set of puzzles, meaning they're easy. Easy! How on Earth are you going to make it through 60 of these things? By summoning the spirit of the relentless bear (that solves puzzles), that's how!

Ozzle is built around sliding tiny marbles across a slotted circular board. There are three line axes that bisect three concentric circles, all surrounding a center point. In other words, it's a wheel with spokes. Or a delicious pie! On top of this pie are colored marbles that can slide along any of these lines. Dragging across a circle moves all the marbles on that circle, while dragging a line moves marbles in that line. You start with things in a bit of a jumble and must match the pattern shown at the bottom of the screen using as few moves as possible. Also, there's a time limit. You can undo moves or reset the whole thing, but you're highly encouraged to seek out big-brained alien beings to give you a hand instead.

Ok, so Ozzle may not be as painfully difficult as we make it out to be, but there's definitely a good level of challenge here, especially since the puzzles are spatially-oriented, something you don't necessarily see that often in games. The presentation gives you this false sense of happy fun time cartoon land, but take our word for it, this is a real and serious game, and when it comes to high scores or insane levels, there's nothing bubblegum pink about Ozzle...

Play Ozzle (browser demo)

Ozzle Lite

(iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch)

Ozzle

(iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch)

Ozzle

(OS X 10.7+)

NOTE: This game was played and reviewed on an iPad. Game was available in the North American market at the time of publication, but may not be available in other territories. Please see individual app market pages for purchasing info.