MAZAICA

I previously gave this a negative review, primarily because of the coin mechanic that made sense for the game on mobile but not on PC. The developer however not only responded, but deployed a fix really quickly (within 24 hours) which removed that mechanic from the game. While I have a few very minor complaints about the resulting game (application crashes on close, aggressive screen flashing until mistakes are fixed, and a slightly odd sound effect for completing lines), they are ultimately minor. The puzzles really are solid here, exactly what you'd imagine from the store page, and are fun to play, and it is great to see the dev so actively fixing issues.

Mazaica is a lovely and genuinely impressive puzzle game by the developer of Scalak, Zenge, OXXO, and PUSH. Your objective is to cover the entire grid by drawing colored lines of given lengths, while adhering to clues like "this tile must be a certain color" or "these two adjacent tiles must not belong to the same line".

There's a lot to love about this game.

Firstly, the puzzle mechanic is great. The simple line-drawing concept provides a surprising amount of depth, and different grid layouts and types of clues sometimes interact with the rules in surprising ways.

Secondly, the game is incredibly juicy. It's not easy to make it engaging to draw lines on a static screen, but this dev managed to do it with flying colors. The UI for drawing lines is super quick and responsive, and the experience is further augmented by the satisfying sounds, animations, and music. As a result, drawing lines is a delight.

Thirdly, the game is BIG and offers a ton of varied content and challenges: there are ~112 levels featuring a huge variety of grids, types of clues, and difficulty modes. Levels often feel genuinely different from one another. There are easy levels which are very quick to solve, and huge levels which can nonetheless be solved incrementally. The levels are also a good mix between handcrafted and randomized: Level layouts and grids are handcrafted, while the specific lines and clues are randomized. This provides a ton of replayability.

Fourth, the game features a robust save & continue system: You can exit & enter each individual level and difficulty mode, and continue them later on in any order. This is awesome, particularly for the huge final levels which can't necessarily be finished in a single play session.

The game is obviously a labor of love, though it's not quite perfect, and I do have a few criticisms:

Firstly, puzzle solutions are not unique. In some puzzle games that really annoys me; here I didn't mind at all, though I'm not sure why that is.

More frustrating is the lack of undo. There's a hint system instead, which is fine, but in the big levels I did occasionally miss an undo.

In terms of art assets, the music is pleasing but loops imperfectly, which can be a bit grating. And some backgrounds are low-resolution and aliased.

EDIT: There was also a weird coins system from the mobile version of the game, but it was patched out. Hooray for devs who listen to player feedback!

Final verdict: Highly recommended. This is my favorite game by this dev. I'm genuinely impressed. Plus the game feels downright underpriced on Steam.

Lukewarm down-rec from me. The game teeters between childlike difficulty to extreme tedium the likes of putting on bed sheets on a king-sized bed in a cramped room. The sweet spot is when you get large numbers you have to maneuver across each other, but the levels don't have any kind of elegant balance or flow, so I never got into a groove. Fair to pass the time, but don't expect any revelations.