If you like logic puzzles, you’ll probably enjoy Boxi by Attila Jenei. The game reminds me of those cheap, plastic grid puzzles found in a supermarket’s toy section with movable pieces, that form a picture once you unscramble their arrangement. The gameplay of these puzzles entails switching squares around, figuring out pathways and finding the logical route of least resistance to achieve that final, correct assemblage.

Boxi is similar to these games and to the enormously popular block games found in numbers on iTunes, in that the player must logically arrange blocks in order to get another block to a specific location, but colliding three or more like blocks results in their being taken off the screen. Obviously, you want the blocks to disappear, as this means more points for you, and possible combo scores. The goal in Boxi is to create connected shapes of three or more like colored boxes, with combo shapes – connecting other blocks into groups one after another, in quick succession – earning you extra points. Tap on a box and slide it in any direction to move it, but know that the box will slide, undisturbed, from one wall to the opposite wall unless there is an obstacle to stop its unhindered movement. Such obstacles include another box, a stationary rock, the wall, or an ice cube. The ice cubs will melt upon contact, and are sidelong objectives in each level. With no timer, the level ends only when there are less than 3 boxes left of each color, and all ice cubes are melted. If all boxes are removed, a score of “perfect” is achieved, otherwise it’s simply “done.” With 50 levels to beat, Boxi challenges you in every possible way except for time; once the game is finished, a Random Set game mode truly renders the game interminable, randomly generating levels ad infinitum.

A few tutorials bring you up to speed in gameplay, warming up your dusty and moth-ridden spatial logic skills, but the tutorials manage to instill in you a false sense of gravitas, leaving you to wonder if perhaps the game is too easily solved and if it will even be challenging at all. If anything, a premature sense of boredom sets in, you assuming the game, without timers and bonus points for quickly solving the puzzle, will not just idly pass you by, your I.Q. barely batting an eye as you slide boxes by in a ho-hum been-there-done-that manner. Thankfully, the tutorials are just that – brief, simple tutorials to introduce you to the game’s mechanisms. Levels 1-6 are extraordinarily straightforward, the mental equivalent of a casual walk – four to six direct flicks of the thumb and the level is already beaten, with that enviable score of “Perfect.” Ahh, if only perfection were so easily attained. Once you reach Level 7, however, titled “Navigate,” your cocky haziness will slowly wane as it dawns upon you the less straightforward nature of this level. As you slide the orange boxes in a calculated fashion, circumnavigating the center arrangement of five stationary rocks and one ice cube with a trapped orange block, you realize the endless possibilities for this game, its impending difficulty finally registering a brisk walk on your mental radar. Each subsequent level poses new challenges, with more colored blocks in numbers of 6 or more, more ice cubes, and multiple routes to achieve an end result.

It’s hard for me to call any app, or any game, brilliant, but Boxi sure does come close. It doesn’t need fancy graphics, confusing gameplay, complex controllers, or frilly doo-dads to create an intricate, tricky labyrinth of a game. At first, I was disappointed there wasn’t a timer for each level, which could enable you to earn more points for finishing quickly, or destroying blocks in a certain order (“I call this one ‘The Knight’s Gambit’ “), but the lack of a timer gives you full freedom to explore the possibilities of each level, sliding boxes this way and that, figuring out the most logical way, or in some cases, the only possible way to remove all boxes from the grid. Try getting combos and “perfect” scores in the later levels. Go ahead, just try.

$1.99 is an appropriate price for this type of game, but $0.99 would be the better bargain, since before playing this game, many people may prematurely disregard it, placing it in the same category as all those other block-breaking games that in many ways, can’t hold a candle to this game. Boxi is far more intricate and delicately played than block breaking games, which usually can be played without any logic, just haphazardly shooting stuff around and exploding things – you’ll usually end up with high scores, anyway. Now, if you’re looking for some beautifully artistic, breathtaking app, with complex functions and premises, look elsewhere – that isn’t the point of this game. If you want a game to pass the time and challenge you intensely at the same time, with a highly effective design for what it is, I highly recommend Boxi.

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