Hedronism by CouchWorld Games

Posted on October 29th, 2008. Written by Arron.

The guys over at CouchWorld Games (also the makers of Shards [App Store], which we’ll be reviewing shortly) have come up with a puzzler which uses a concept not too dissimilar to that behind the original Rubik’s Cube [Wiki]. Hedronism relies on your logic and your ability to assess spacial direction.

Hit us after the jump for a full look of what Hedronism offers …

The Aim
In each game of Hedronism [App Store], you’ll first start out with a cell which flashes. This is your cursor, and the controlling space in which you use to change the colour of other cells. During the game, you use this cell to change directly adjacent cells to the colour of your cursor. Don’t get too excited though, if you trap yourself between two different coloured cells, you’ll have no option other than to change your cell back to the opposite colour and continue in that colour. The aim? – fill the globe with one solid colour of your choice. Plan your path logically and try to beat the clock.

The game includes 18 levels which vary in difficulty.

“You start on a faceted globe and can move to your immediately adjacent neighbors changing their color in a predictable sequence. The goal is to turn the globe into any single color in the shortest time possible. Advancing to the next level increases the number of colors.”

- John of CouchWorld Games

Visuals & Sound
Hedronism is fairly well designed, and animation of the globe is smooth. One thing I do like about it (and I found it quite accidentally) is the option to zoom in on any part of the globe. The guys have implemented the touch and pitch gesture, meaning with a pinch you can see more clearly as to where your meant to be headed.

Sound on the game is subtle but well placed. Sounds arise when a menu item is tapped, and when you successfully move your originating cell on top of another.

You won’t find a backing track though, which kinda disappointed me. I thought it’d be pretty perfect for a game like this to have one. Naturally I tried to play music from iPod.app while launching the game, and for about 3 minutes the music played perfectly – and then the RAM ran out, and threw me back to the home screen. This is obviously something which needs a bit of work, and I’m not quite sure if it’s Hedronism, or iPhone OS 2.1 yet.

Reply Value
Does it have reply value? – a bit. It’s addictive, and you really do want to finish colouring the globe, but it is quite hard, even on Easy, and because of this it can get a tad frustrating. Then again, what puzzle would be without some real challenges?

Price
A fairly addictive and definitely well designed title like this could sell for what? Let’s say .. £2.99, Right? Hedronism currently sells for 59p.

Overall
Its a great game, with good visuals, could do with a soundtrack, or the ability to play iPod.app in the background. Apart from that, it’s a novel concept, it’s brightly coloured and it’s slickly designed.

Kudos go out to the designers on this one; Rene Rivera, Jamie Vann and John Welch.
Not forgetting Jody Everson for designing the artwork.

Reviewed at: v1.0.0
Released on: October 7th 2008

Check them out: Couchworldgames.com
Grab it: Hedronism