Bytten

Everyone needs a hobby. Can you guess what the Stone Collector enjoys doing? Take a look at the picture to the left here. This is the Stone Collector, doing a happy jig because he's found a stone. He reminds me of someone... Your task is to help him collect stones (and in the process, unlock new parts of the game) by rolling them into the correct collection points. Once a stone starts moving it has to hit something before it will stop, and there are many objects and obstacles to hinder you.

There is some similarity between Stone Collector and our earlier review, Rotadim. As we have said before at Bytten, originality is good, but not as important as how well the game is made. The main difference here is the style - Rotadim uses graphics and background music, while this game has focused on a wider range of interactive objects and over twice as many puzzles.

Your objective is to get the correct coloured stones into their corresponding collection points. Early tutorial puzzles are very straightforward; later ones with teleporters, colour convertors, movable blocks, one-way arrows and more can get particularly nasty. There is a move counter, which suggests how many moves are required, but a nice touch here is that you still win if you use more. Hints are available too.

I've said that this game focuses more on the puzzles and interactive objects than on the graphics and sound. This is not to say that the graphics and sound lose out on the deal. Nearly everything that moves in this game animates, from the rolling stones to the fluxing teleporters. Everything is smooth and looks professional, though the puzzles can look rather similar after a while.

Soundwise, this is a rather quiet game. The 'click' as a stone rolls to a stop is nice and the applause on completing a level is very welcome, especially after a harder level. This feels right to me - while I'd love a series of backing tracks and lots of sound effects both would quickly become irritating on a puzzle game like this, where you may be on the same puzzle for a long time.

The gameplay itself is excellent. Controls are simple - you click on a stone (or other movable object) and then on one of the arrows that appear around it. The right mouse button deselects. No keyboard is required. There are hints available, as well as options to undo the previous move, restart that puzzle or abandon it to choose another.

Keywords: stone collector review, diangy.com reviews, diangy.com games, stone collector scores, pc game reviews, indie game reviews, independent gaming.