Cross Fingers is a game that definitely lives up to its title—it really gets your fingers in a twist! It’s a mind bending puzzle game from Mobigame, the makers of Edge, that requires good spacial awareness and some pretty flexible fingers. The game itself is like a slide puzzle, in which you have to position all the pieces into the correct places. The blocks aren’t regular though, they vary in size and shape, and often share a resemblance with tangram pieces.

To complete a level you must get all the moveable blocks to cover the silhouettes. While this sounds simple, it isn’t easy because the blocks aren’t entirely freely moving. They are actually surrounded by a wooden frame and to achieve your goal you must slide the blocks past each other, as they collide if you slide them into each other. This gives the game a very lifelike feel, especially with the occasional clunks from blocks hitting the sides.

Few of the puzzles in Cross Fingers are straight forward since multitouch is a significant aspect in the game. Red blocks can only be moved along one path, and when released, spring back to their starting position. This means if there is more than one red block you have to hold them while you slide the other blocks past, making you wish you had just a few more fingers. These blocks aren’t wasted in the gameplay, instead they are used in some very unique and innovative ways. Take a look at the gameplay video below to get a feel for the game:

The 120 levels included in Cross Fingers are split into four difficulty levels; easy, medium, hard and pro. The difficulty does increase as you move through the levels, but it seems like each level pack is designed to have a separate increase, so instead of a gradual curve, it rises up a notch per pack. This means you’ll often find the first levels in each pack rather easy and then you’re thrown into the hard stuff.

After completing the 120 puzzle levels included you unlock arcade mode (which took us a good three or four hours). This mode has you forming a square with random blocks which enter from the four sides of the screen. There is a clear sense of urgency in this mode because you have to form squares as fast as possible so that the screen doesn’t fill with blocks. When the screen is full of blocks, it’s game over. We certainly appreciate this extra mode, but we feel that without any online highscores it’s a little shallow and looses its fun quickly.

The controls are generally smooth in Cross Fingers, with just a few hiccups such as some blocks sticking and sometimes a little unresponsive. Luckily this rarely happens and the gameplay is for the most part enjoyable. We do believe that the game is lacking without online highscores though, both in the arcade and puzzle modes. While we understand that once you have completed a level, you know the solution, we also know that it takes a huge amount of dexterity to be able to finish all the levels quickly, therefore justifying online highscore boards. All in all Cross Fingers is an excellent puzzle game and for 59p you really can’t go wrong (unless you hate puzzles).

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Review by Ben Briggs, March 01, 2009

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