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Unify (iPhone)


Review by Ben Briggs, September 29, 2009

iPhone integration (About)
  • Save state: Yes
  • iPod music: Yes
  • Status bar: No
  • Version: 1.0
  • Price as reviewed: £1.19
  • by Zach Gage

Unify is another simple arcade puzzler with a twist, but we can certainly say that it plays like the best of them. Imagine two parallel Tetris boards, flipped on their side so that both bottom sides are touching. Pieces inch towards the middle and become a single block once they get there. By manipulating the flow of blocks you can create combos, as like coloured blocks disappear once they're 4 squares or larger.

You control the left hand side with your left thumb, and the right side with your right. Happily, thumbs do not need to be touching the blocks themselves, which come in pairs. A pair can either be two different colours or two of one colour, but unlike Tetris the blocks can separate when they hit other blocks that have already been positioned.

If that sounds a little complex, don't worry because the game becomes very natural even on your first try. But it's in the complicated combos that Unify shines - do you pop 'em quickly for small points, or allow a huge amount of blocks on screen to cascade into each other at the last moment? The game certainly rewards daring players with superlatives attached to each combo - the first two are 'basic combo (x2)' and 'smart combo (x3)', we're not sure of the limit on these but have managed to get a 6x combo once.

Unify will attempt to disorient you with it's random array of difficulty switching. Sometimes, it adds one extra colour to the pot, other times it speeds the gameplay up or slows it down. It can even change the whole colour of the board/blocks completely, keeping you on your toes. A nice touch is that when the screen fills up nearer the edges, the sides glow red - so you know where to focus even if the board has changed completely.

The presentation is clean and attractive - what we like about it is that it's very different to a lot of the games released. Each colour combination may be completely random but they're not unattractive, suggesting that the palette is predetermined. We love the clicky sound effects and quirky music, but it's a shame it's either the game's audio or your music. We would have liked to hear the sound effects over our iPod soundtrack.

Nevertheless, we can recommend Unify as a great multitouch puzzler that's born for the iPhone. It's gesture based controls work exceedingly well, and in all it's a refreshing take on the tired Tetris formula. Plus, it's only £1.19, so do yourself a favour and buy one of the better puzzle games on the App Store - the 59p sale price was limited for the game's first week.

Grade: B, Great

Inventive multitouch puzzler that takes on Tetris in a big way.

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