Puzzle games abound in the iTunes App Store. That fact is well established. However, which ones deserve your hard-earned cash? We recently took a look at the offerings and have chosen five new iPhone puzzlers that are worth your dollar. Here are our findings.

Cross Fingers dares players to rearrange wooden shapes to cover a dark background. Shapes can be dragged into place one by one. Two styles of shapes are present, light colored wood and red wood. Red wood pieces bring some difficulty as that cannot stay in place without being help there. If let go of, they will slide back to their previous position. Players are required to hold these red pieces in place while moving other pieces around them. Hence, the app Cross Fingers gets its name. You must twist your fingers to hold the red pieces while arranging the light wooden shapes around them.

Pocketball is a physics-based puzzle game that utilizes the Box2D engine. Here, players are challenged to guide balls into pockets. Balls drop from the top of the screen at predefined locations. Users must then draw ropes between pegs to aim the balls toward their goal. As balls hit ropes, they bounce according to the gravitation pull within the app. Making things even more complex, certain obstacles can throw the balls off course. Bombs can destroy balls, while gravity wells suck them into a sort of black hole. Arrows are present in some levels that help push the balls in the right direction.

Implode contains 60 levels of buildings, just begging to be reduced to rubble. Each level presents you with the drawing of a building on a chalkboard, with only the support beams visible. You are also given a limited number of bundles of dynamite or blast bombs. These explosives must be placed upon the support beams in a configuration that, when detonated, will cause the building to crumble upon itself, with the highest point of the inevitable pile of rubble below an artificial dotted line. If you are unable to drop the building below the line, you fail and must retry the level. If you succeed, you receive a letter grade (just like in school) and a point total, comprised of Explosion Points, a Height Bonus, an Unused Bomb Bonus, and a Difficulty Bonus. Each of these is converted into dollar amounts, for a total payout in each level. Achieving an A+ on any given level is quite a challenge that will require much tweaking of explosive placement. Progressing through the game will expose you to new challenges, such as beams upon which no bombs can be placed or structures supported by a surprising number of beams, making them harder to bring down.

Famous puzzle creator Dr. Knizia, has released his latest iPhone creation in the form of Monumental, a Mayan themed game. Players must arrange stones within a pair of 3 x 4 grids. Stones, which are randomly presented, must be placed in either of these grids with the goal of making matches. These stones are categorized by color , symbol, and the number of symbols on their faces. As an example of gameplay, players attempt to have three stones that match color, symbol, and number of symbols in the same row. This would generate the highest score. However, this is a rare case. Points can be awarded even if only the colors, symbols, or number of symbols match though. An identical pair of stones in a row can also award points, even if the third stone doesn’t match any characteristic. Players must be aware of broken stones too as these can only be matched by colors.

Wordigo is a unique word puzzle game for sale on the App Store by RiverEdge Game Company. Combining creative word development and a fierce seven minute time limit, Wordigo aims to be the word game players will keep coming back to. Unlike other word building games, Wordigo prescribes where you can create certain words and limits each game with a strict descending seven minute clock. Eight puzzle boards are offered, each designed with horizontal and vertical paths for words. Think of a partial cross-word puzzle with several word paths and empty areas. The goal is to construct words using randomly generated letter tiles. Players can only move on to a new path once the previous path is complete. Scoring is based on clever vowel placement.

We hope our review of some of the latest and greatest puzzle games give you an idea of what the App Store has to offer. These are simply five of the puzzlers that caught our eye. Regardless of your choice of one or all, we feel you’ll enjoy each puzzle’s unique characteristics.

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