Free Play: Abstractica

After looking at a bunch of shootin' n' tootin' games available for download at 1up,com, I settled on a totally different, oddball kind of game in the puzzle section.  It's called "Abstractica" and they described it as "just a series of deceptively simple-looking brainteasers designed to test how quickly your head hurts when playing it." Perfect.  I'll be able to beat this sucker in no time.  Hell, I'll try it with one eye closed.

Simple download.  No grinding noise from inside my laptop.  Yep.

Title screen.  Here we go.

...ok?  Hell, I was BORN OK!  Let's Go!

Over the next 42 or so minutes, I got through JUST 11 of the brain teasers.  Most of them are simple, black words or shapes on a white background.  All you gotta do is type a word or a few words and click a "submit" button.  It's the pure definition of "no frills".  There is no story.  And, to some, there might be no point.  Not for me.  I want to know how and why my tiny mind works in certain ways.  Some took me 1.3 seconds to figure out.  Those felt good.  You hear a deep church bell "DONG" each time you get one right.  I love that sound.  If you're wrong...nothing happens.  Maybe there's a way to finagle it, but I wish I didn't have to keep using the mouse to just move the cursor from the "word entry field" to the "submit" button over and over and over each time.  And, how about a hint after 50 good guesses?  

For some of the tough ones, I just stared at the screen hoping something would just pop out at me.  It can't be impossible.  The game maker wouldn't have made it impossible to get past the 5th or 6th one.  Usually, typing the most obvious thing IS the solution.  BUT, it's not always the obvious way of saying what's so obvious about what you're looking at.  Follow me?  At some point,  I just started typing funny things like "game over" and "for the love of god please just tell me the answer to this one". Nothing. You know the answer is right there on the screen, but it's impossible to figure out.  What am I not seeing?  Why am I not getting this?  Stare and think for a few minutes........oh, yeah......how....about.....this (type, type, type, submit)...DONG!

I got stuck on one and turned off the computer for the morning (yep, I'd been playing it in the deep, dark dead of night - no music, no t.v. - just me looking at brain teasers, typing stuff, and muttering profanities real low).  The next night, I wanted to see how Anna, my wife, did.  Maybe she would see the twelfth teaser and the solution would be clear to her.

It was a lot of fun knowing the answers while she struggled to solve the first ones.  For a lot of them, the very first thing that popped into her head was the same thing that I thought of first.  See, great minds DO think alike!

She did help me find the answer to #12, but then we both got stuck on the next one.  I could feel all the smart juice oozing from my brain, so I had to stop.  There are ways of finding out all the answers on the webernet, but I'd rather get 'em on my own (I did see that somebody in some chat room was asking about #46, so that made us feel like big ol' dummies).

I'll probably return to the frustrating mental fun house of horrors that is "Abstractica" one day.  One day in the far, far future.  If an answer I didn't try entering for #13 pops into my head while I'm scrubbing grout stains - I'll drop what I'm doing and type it in.  Maybe I'll get that elusive "DONG".

 Final rating.............7 out of 10 monkey sneezes.

(download it here and give it a try - if you get all of them and beat the game in 6 minutes - don't tell me...ever)