Puz: Yingyang [by Cornutopia]

Game: Yingyang
Release: Now Available
Genre: Puzzle
Developer: Cornutopia
System Requirements: Windows, DirectX8
Price: $11.99

Though the ancient symbol of peace and meditation has found many uses in eastern Religions and mystic ceremonies it still has one more endeavor to perform. To thoroughly and utterly challenge your patience to no end. In its very own game the Yinyang symbol has a staring roll as a ball that must boldly travel through level after level filled with twists, turns, and dead ends. Your part in all this is to guide the symbol of inner light through each of these levels as you try your best not to roll of the edge of the tiles and into oblivion.

I should begin by saying Yinyang by Cornutopia is a beautiful game and a generally good idea. Cornutopia says that its game resembles Super Monkey Ball or as we call it over here on the east coast “SMB”. Yes we are down with those Super Monkey’s (Roll on Monkey, Roll on.) But anyway like I was saying Cornutopia says Yinyangs’ genre closely resembles that of SMB however I disagree. Yinyang in my opinion more closely resembles Ataris’ Marble Madness a popular arcade game of the eighties.

The first thing you need for this game is patience and I mean a lot of patience as you roll your Yinyang ball through a myriad of challenging levels. The second thing you need is good problem solving skills because this game will push you to your limits as you try to figure out the best route to take through the maze of disappearing tiles.

The basic challenge to this game is that some tiles flip when you cross over them and most disappear as they flip over so you can not go back the way you came. This situation often creates a lot of dead ends. Also your goal is not to just to get to the other side without falling off the edge although for me that would be difficult enough a goal to accomplish. But no. Your goal is to actually flip every tile while on your way to the end of the level.

With 50 levels and 2 unlockable bonus levels you get a great variety of challenges with this game. If you’re the type of person who thrives on challenges, who loves to stand against insurmountable odds, whos inner tiger must be let out to roam free, then try writing video game reviews. But until you do that Yinyang will definitely give you a run for your gaming buck.

There are not lot of Graphics or animations to Yinyang. After all its just a rolling ball and some tiles. However what graphics are in this game look great. There is even a nice little mirror effect on the ball as you roll around and the tile animation is very smooth. You can tell that Cornutopia put some effort into the graphics on this title. Even though its really not the type of game that needs to look good, it does.

Remember that large amount of patience that I was talking about? Well most of it is needed to control the darn ball. I'm not saying the control scheme is bad. On the contrary considering the genre its quite good. You basically use the four arrow keys to move your ball in one of these four directions. As you move through the narrow tiles you have to be careful not to fall off the edge or you will die and have to start back at the beginning of the level. If you meet your demise three times the game is over. Momentum plays a part in all this as it is sometimes difficult to stop once you get going. If you do somehow manage successfully to navigate your way through the tiles that magically flip over and disappear you will notice that some of those tiles have different patterns on them. These are tiles that flip over more than once before they disappear. This significantly adds to the difficulty of the puzzle.

I know what your thinking. Your thinking that as long as you are patient enough to slowly move your ball and if you are careful enough to plan your route to best complete the puzzle then you will be fine. You’ll roll through the maze and happily defeat the game. Well your right. At least for the most part. As long as you stay with the difficulty setting set to easy then that is a solid strategy. However there are four difficulty settings and all except for the easy setting has a time limit to complete each level. So the pressure is on as sometimes it seems impossible to take those five remaining sharp turns and flip over the last ten tiles before the final three seconds run off the clock and you loose yet another ball.

I have to admit that I had some mixed feelings about this game at first. For one I did not think that I could enjoy rolling a ball around as much as I did. I also could not believe how emotionally attached I could get to the little thing for each time it would inch off the edge after all the time I spent moving slowly towards my goal I actually had to choke back the tears as the mystic symbol of inner diversity fell into the dark oblivion. Usually I just get really upset, scream at the monitor and throw my mouse against the wall. If you’re the type of person who loves a good puzzle then I would definitely have to recommend this one.

Graphics: 8
I have to say that Cornutopia did great in the graphics area this score would have been higher if there were a bit more of these nice graphics. What I would liked to have seen is the ball meeting its demised in a few different ways like maybe exploding when the clock ran out.

Sound: 6
The sounds did blend in well with the environments but they did not make any lasting impression on me.

Game Play: 8
Cornutopia did a good job with the control scheme making this game a real challenge.

Options: 7
Four difficultly settings lets you decide just how hard you want this game to be but if you want to keep your sanity don’t even try the “impossible” setting.

Concept: 8
The concept has been done but Yinyang does have a few new twists.

Fun: 7
This game will get you hooked for awhile even if your not big into puzzle games.

Overall: 7
All things being equal this is a fun game that you should try. This game is easy to learn and hard to master and its perfect if you just need to kill some time.

ScreenshsotsAdded: February 15th 2003
Reviewer: Torrence Kelley
Score:
Related Link: Screenshots
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Language: english