XBLIG News, Reviews & Previews

PerlMania is a really interesting, addictive and can be a frustrating puzzler! The object is simple - to get to the exit, but the how is what can sting you...

Think of pinball; now throw in some rubber balls (pearls) with faces... Ok, with me so far? Right, now throw in some explosives! What you have to do is place the faces within the central area of the game screen then with that done, place the explosive, so that when it goes off, the force pushes the faces in towards the exit zones. Easy enough, apart from the fact that there are also obstacles to get past and bounce off of to reach your goal.

Luckily your goal has what can only really think of as gravity, but only slight, so that if you get close enough you will get pulled in, but only if you are not going too fast. You need to remain in the exit circle for three seconds. The game begins of slow with most levels only having one or two faces, but then get's somewhat more difficult as more start to get thrown in and the obstacle start to increase too.

The presentation of PerlMania is totally graphical - I don't recall seeing any text (except on the highscores). In my opinion, it is really great the way Jey & Oli have put the game together with the use of no text - granted, I did wonder what the heck was going on when I first loaded up the game.

PerlMania is an original puzzler that I would highly recommend to puzzler fans out there. My rating of PerlMania is