To be honest, I don’t really get stumped while playing console games such as Shadow of Mordor, Grand Theft Auto V or even Fallout 3, and that’s despite the prevalent puzzle elements in that last title. On the other hand, casual games often get the better of me on the intellectual/problem-solving side. Case in point would be indie developer William Wu’s first iOS/Android puzzle game, Get to Zero.
For starters, the game looks incredibly polished for a first-timer’s foray onto the App Store/Google Play. Don’t let the slick, colourful graphics (which coincidently reminded me of Nintendo’s Picross DS title) fool you, this math-based 2D puzzler is one tough cookie. The premise of the game is pretty simple, tap the numbered tiles on the screen in order to get all of them to zero.
Players have a limited number of moves in each level, and depending on whether the player is provided with a + or – sign, each move can either add or subtract the value of the tiles. Tiles that are adjacent to the tile being tapped, with the same value will be affected by that numeric operation. Based on the distribution of numbered tiles, players will need to figure out the proper sequence to add and subtract in order to get all of the tiles down to 0.
Personally, I was stuck at the 11th level under Stage 01 which is practically for beginners, and I just got past that level several minutes before typing out this review. Get to Zero features 5 Stages, representing varying degrees of difficulty, with 20 levels each, bringing the total number of levels to a grand 100. Players can choose to perform an in-app purchase to unlock Stages 4 and 5, or complete the first 3 Stages to unlock Stage 4. Completing Stages 1-4 will then unlock Stage 5 with no purchases necessary.
The challenging, not to mention, addictive gameplay with polished 2D graphics, belie the fact that Get to Zero is William Wu’s first game on both iOS and Android platforms. For that, Nineoverten.com rates Get to Zero a deserving 5 out of 5. Count me impressed! Check out the game, which is available as a Free-To-Play title on the iTunes App Store, and the Google Play Store.
