Pandora's Box - Box

Pandora's Box
Age Everyone

Puzzles - wondrous puzzles, clever puzzles, enough puzzles to last you for days and days, thanks to the imagination of the inventor of Tetris - Akexey Pajitnov (no, I don't know how to pronounce his name either). The story which weaves around the puzzles is that of Pandora who opens a box and lets forth seven pranksters. To trap each one of them you must solve up to ten puzzles in five different current cities. The story is irrelevant to the puzzles and functions simply as a binder providing an incentive to solve the puzzles. You can also skip the story and just solve the puzzles - 350 of them.

But let me get on to the puzzles. There are ten unique concepts on how to manipulate shapes . They are:

  • Find and Fill - Find and color the hidden shape among the many outlines.
  • Focus Point - A visual take off from the nine square problem.
  • Image Hole - Find the matching shape under the moving overlay
  • Interlock - Reminiscent of tangrams.
  • Jesse's Strips - Compose the object from strips
  • Lens Bender - Swap pieces that dynamically expand or contract.
  • Outer Layer - Manipulate surface of a three dimensional object
  • Overlap - Puzzle pieces in L shapes which can overlap.
  • Rotascope - Compose the picture by rotating and sliding pieces
  • Slices - Rebuild a three dimensional object that has been sliced and rotated.

    • So there you have them all. The computer adds interesting tricks like zooming, motion and transparency. There is a tutorial for every type of puzzle. They start out disarmingly simple and grow into complexity. Alexy said the he wanted to create puzzle games that would be quieter and more relaxing than Tetris and he did.

    Genevieve 5/00

  • Pandora's Box
  • © Microsoft 1999 $34.95
  • Windows 95,98 and WindowsNT