Verge

Sometimes even the simplest ideas can have a great impact on the players when it comes to video games, because people love to tackle challenging puzzles using simple mechanics. However, everything must have a purpose, otherwise the effort feels pointless and it’s difficult to go on when you are just repeating the same tasks over and over again.

Verge is a very simple idea in theory, but the gameplay requires a bit of practice before you are able to understand how everything works. In short, the goal of each level is to occupy a certain cell on a grid, using one of the multiple shapes available at your disposal. These shapes can only move in certain patterns around the board, and all sorts of traps make an appearance along the way.

While some of the shapes have a very strict and classic movement pattern, such as up or down a few cells, others are a tad more complex, much like it’s the case with chess pieces. Hence, some can be moved diagonally for quite some distances, while others hop from cell-to-cell following certain patterns. It gets easier after you play for a while and learn how everything works.

Enemies make an appearance after the introductory levels, and some of them have the capability to move. Naturally, it’s important to avoid the cells occupied by them, but sometimes this requires a bit of planning beforehand. Even so, the difficulty level is fairly forgiving, even this is your first contact with this type of game, given the fact that you can always reset the level and try again.

The graphics are a tad disappointing, on the other hand, because a lot more could have been achieved, even with the simple technology used by the developers. In this case, the annoying colors can even make it difficult to play sometimes, because it’s tough to see the road ahead when the colors are so bright and similar to each other on the board.

All things considered, Verge is not a bad idea, but the execution leaves a lot of room for improvement. Thus, the game needs more work in the graphics and gameplay department, because it gets repetitive and annoying after the first couple of levels.