Move 'n' Bloom

Review

You begin on the world map with around ten levels which you can play through to start with. Selecting Level One will take you in-game, and consists of a Three-by-Three grid with Two Pink Coloured Square Icons with heart shaped faces. In order to complete the level, you must move the Icons and bring them together. However, the movement of the Icons are linked, so if you move up then both Icons will move up, move left and they’ll move left as long as there are no obstacles in the way.

One the first level the grid is a brown colour, as though it’s soil. Upon bring together the Icons of the same colour, the ground will bloom and you’ll get a big green thumbs up. The grid you play in will grow in size and comes in various shapes; the number of Icons will also grow and there may be more than one colour type on the grid. In this case you will need to match all Icons to their corresponding colours.

This all sounds easy so far . . . move around a few coloured blocks and you’re sorted. However, not all levels will consist of just soil grids to play on. As you progress through the levels, parts of the grid will already be in bloom with only so many soil squares available. You’ll have to manoeuvre the Icons so that they bloom on the open soil squares. As well as having to contend with multiple coloured Icons and restricted soil spaces, there are other obstacles, such as jars, multiple square blocks and sticky blocks which will impede your movements.

Some types of Icons will require being moved onto certain grid squares, such as a greyed-out seedling square. These types of icons are not a squared icon, and as such they cannot be combined by the same coloured icons. They will first have to be moved on to the greyed-out seedling square. Some Icons are sleeping and so they cannot be moved so; you’ll have to find a way to to reach them. You must connect at least two icons before they can bloom; it doesn’t matter if they are in a line or as a corner, as long as they are connected on a side of another icon.

There are over sixty levels to play and although the game looks all nice and cute it can be very frustrating. On the right of the screen are a few shortcuts for World Map (Escape), Hints (H), Music (M0 and Restart (R). If you get stuck, you can hit the Hints icon and it will help you by showing you the first of many moves and help you to hopefully to complete that level.

However, even using the hints I have found myself struggling to complete a couple levels later on in the game. You can also undo moves rather than restarting from the beginning of a level. Each move you make, a photo is placed on the left side of the screen; pressing “Z” will undo the last move, holding down “Z” will auto undo your moves.

There’s not a lot of settings for the game:  Music and Sound Volume Controls, Window and Full Screen modes, Resolution, Moving or Static Background On/Off and Delete Progress.  You can also find any achievements unlocked here.

I’ve enjoyed playing Move “n” Bloom thus far; it’s a fun little puzzle game, but don’t be fooled by its cute looks. The game has some challenging levels; I got stuck on levels 42 and 45. Even using the hints, I can’t seem to figure out how to complete the levels. But hey, who wants easy puzzles anyway? I like a challenge!

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!