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Genre: Puzzle
Developer: Danielle Cassley, Jason Citron
Seller: Danielle Cassley
File Size: 24.1 MB
Requirements: iPhone 2.0 software
Compatibility: iPhone and iPod touch
Age Rating: 4+
Price: Free
Version Reviewed: 1.0.1.0

Aurora Feint is not an amazing game simply due to its features, but also due to the fact that it’s free. Either the Aurora Feint developers are really stupid or really nice, because the game I play the most (way more than Super Monkey Ball, Enigmo or Cro-Mag Rally) is free. It just blows my mind. But enough about that. What makes the game so mind-boggling? Let’s get right into it.

When you start Aurora Feint, you are greeted by a Map (above left) with four options: Mine, Store, Smith, or Tower. Mining (above right) is where it all begins. “Mining” is basically a simple puzzle game. Blocks of five different colors (“elements”) are all mixed up in a stack and slowly rising to the top. Get three or more of the same kind in a row by sliding them left or right between stacks and those three or more explode. The goal is to explode as many as possible and not let any stack reach the top of the screen. It’s fairly simple to do, and a whole new layer of fun is added upon discovery of the fact that tilting the iPhone in any direction changes the “gravity” of the puzzle, and the stacks re-orient themselves. This is where strategy comes in, as you can move blocks in any direction by turning the iPhone to change gravity and moving them.

Once you have collected a certain amount, mining pauses and you are given a choice of skills to “level up” in. All the skills are based around mining, so leveling up makes you more adept at mining more minerals. Leveling up also unlocks new purchases at the Store (above left), where you can buy Magicbooks and Blueprints that enhance your abilities within the game. To use these Magicbooks and Blueprints, you must either go to the Smith (above right) for Blueprints, or the Tower (below left) for Magicbooks. At the Smith, you must mine a certain amount of certain elements to build blueprints. Once built, blueprints enhance the value that these elements hold. Magicbooks are mastered by completing a puzzle; you are given a set amount of moves to make all the orbs in a given puzzle collapse (below right.) It is simple at first, but as skills advance, so does difficulty.

All in all, Aurora Feint has no flaws, though that may be due in part to the fact that there is nothing to compare it to; no other free, non-buggy, fun, puzzling, complex games like Aurora Feint yet exist. I can’t wait until more do.