Freeverse’s Accelerometer-Based Puzzle Game: ‘Plank’
posted October 3rd, 2008 9:38 PM EDT by arn in Puzzle, Upcoming Games
Freeverse let us know about an upcoming puzzle game that they are planning for release next week. Before you say you have enough puzzle games on your iPhone, this one may be different enough to be worth a look.
The game is called Plank and is almost exclusively accelerometer-based. It also comes with nice graphics and a steampunk theme. As in all alternative-puzzle-universes, the goal of the game is to match 3 or more.
Balance the marbles on the plank by tilting left and right and roll them to match falling marbles of the same color. Make lines of 3 or more to score points and remove the marbles. Clear the marbles quickly or the weight will be too much for the plank and it will explode.
Power-ups and specials, such as the “shake” smart bomb promise to keep the game exciting. The game also offers three levels of difficulty.
This brief teaser video provides a feel for the gameplay:
October 4th, 2008 at 1:15 am
that looks interesting.
October 4th, 2008 at 9:43 am
WOW…….ANOOOOOOOOOTHER “match 3 and they disappear” puzzle games. wow, i’m so excited i can hardly wait. now i don’t have to play the other 225 “match 3 and they disappear” puzzle games and i can play this “original” game! yeah!
October 4th, 2008 at 10:03 am
I really like the steampunk graphics.
October 4th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Yeah, the graphics look great, but it appears to be a bit slow moving. But I agree with WhySoSerious: I’m sick of the same ideas appearing over and over again. I’m sure I won’t be buying this.
October 4th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Oh great… I’m sorry, I already have Bejeweled 2. With the upcoming release of Puzzle Quest that adds incredible depth to the genre, I really don’t need any other match 3-games.
October 4th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
looks way slow-paced to me…. i like 3-matching puzzle games but i rather go play something more frentic, as Bartig said, Puzzle Quest REALLY adds some depth to this already-old genre…
October 4th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
I was being sarcastic, obviously!
October 4th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
This is very disappointing. There is so much that could be done with the iPhone/iTouch, so many new games that could be made. Yet what do they do? A rehash of an old idea with different graphics.
What really gets me is when they say things like “We don’t need to hear any ideas from players, we have hundreds of new ideas already” then they come out with something as tired as this.
*sigh*
They need to hire someone who’s good at creating _new_games_ rather than programmers who can reprogram the same old games over and over again. Or maybe team up with a non-computer game company who have to come up with new and fun games all the time just to survive against computer gaming. Like Steve Jackson Games. Now _they_ know how to come up with new and creative games!
October 4th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Actually, it’s not a rehash of a connect 3 game. It’s a remake of the game from the ToySight game on the Mac. It’s a skill/balance game that happens to have colour matching in it and it’s very addictive. Don’t judge a game from a screenshot or what the previous posters in a thread have been ‘me too’ing. The screenshot and short clip don’t do it justice.
October 5th, 2008 at 10:45 am
companies will stop making match 3 games when people stop buying them. Why try something risky when when you can quickly pump out a match 3 clone and profit. Trism made over $250,000!
October 6th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Plank offers an innovation to the genre, which like Trism, sets it apart from other puzzle games. Sure, there is a common element to other popular games, namely matching 3 pieces. I have played a ton of FPS games in my life, but I still really liked Bioshock. I think this game could be very compelling… looking forward to this release.
October 8th, 2008 at 11:36 am
I bought it and I’m disappointed. I find the game interesting, but I don’t like the graphics. I love steampunk, but this looks too polished. Steampunk is all about dirty machines, smoke, dust, working stuff. This looks too polished, too “unused”. I also find the marbles too hard to distinguish from each other. And the game overall feels too slow in the reaction and for me it feels that the game often puts the marble on the wrong place. There’s no physics action implemented when putting the marbles on each other, like in Circulate Prologue. You can’t put a marble in a gap between two other marbles - it will snap on top of one of the existing marbles. I really don’t like this behaviour. And to make things worse, the game crashes very often. It’s a good idea to “defragment” the memory with rebooting before starting this app, but I don’t want to do this every single time. I also had a few complete hangs (-> hard reset) with starting the app and changing the volume. It hangs while displaying this volume hud. So I deleted it. Sad.
Circulate Prologue makes much more fun, if you want to try an accelerometer based match-3-thing.