High Rise - A Puzzle Cityscape 4+

Good game in sore need of five-second undo, or something.

High rise is an immensely engaging puzzle game. I love that even after dozens of rounds, I am still discovering new rules and combinations and strategies. It has been very satisfying watching my high score slowly improve, and always fun to try and beat my current best. I also appreciate the ease at which this game functions as either a 15 minute puzzler or 3-hour logic gauntlet (slight exaggeration) depending on personal preference.

One of my few complaints is a big one, though, as it’s an accessibility problem. Too many times my game has been ruined by accidentally placing a stray block while rotating the view. I am disabled and my fingers are twitchy and clumsy. When you’re getting deep, it’s always a game ending error and it’s altogether too easy for it to happen. An undo button on a VERY short timer—or any other mechanism to help address an accidental-tap placement, I’m not a game designer— would be a massive improvement.

3.5 rounded to 4.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for your feedback. I'm afraid we are communicating badly that you already can switch to "double tap" in the options or, since update 1.6, also while playing in the pause menu. We also added an undo button (refilled score-based, so dont overuse it;))

Fantastic puzzle game, with minor flaws

This has quickly become my new favorite puzzle game on my phone. It's a nice new spin on the match and merge concept that's so popular. It's one of those games that's easy to start and difficult to master. Thankfully, there is a tutorial that teaches the basics, as well as a few advanced techniques that'll boost your score quickly.

There are a few quirks with the game that keep this from being perfect. Like everyone has said, the blue and green tiles look too similar, so some better contrast can fix that. One issue I ran into is the tower-clearing power up. It's a useful one, yes, but in the rare event that the board is filled up and the next item is that power up, it just ends the game without me being able to use it. If that can be modified in a future version, I'd greatly appreciate it.

But those are ultimately minor issues with an otherwise enjoyable game. And it's free to boot, so that's an instant plus. If you want something to keep you busy, try this out.

Simple and engaging

This is my new favorite puzzle game. Takes a couple tries to get the hang of it (I had to go through the tutorial a couple of times), but it’s worth it. At first, I thought the goal was to get the highest tower possible, so I would not use the “remove” feature on my high towers. But I realized you don’t lose points for removing them and it really helps to free up space. Once I figured that out, it really helped the game going.

Three things I would recommend to the developer.

1) It would be good to expand the tutorial a bit to explain how multiple color blocks work. It took me awhile to figure out that colors only merge if they are at the same level.

2) It would be great to have an immediate undo button for the last block you dropped. I can’t tell you how many time I accidentally tapped the wrong square and placed the block in the wrong spot. Maybe even have a timer on the button of a couple seconds. That way the user can’t undo because after thinking about where to place the next block, they realize they want to undo the block they just placed. Should/could be for “oops!” moments only.

3) The last thing, and I don’t if it’s just me. But I often place a block down thinking the color is actually the NEXT block. Not the current one. Maybe if there was a box or something around the current block to help make it stand out.