GAME
OF THE
DAY
pliq: A Marvelous Puzzle Game
Create and match jelly blocks!
The puzzler Pliq focuses on the concept of negative space – everything in an image that isn’t there. Your goal is to fill in negative space cube by cube. Your reward? Riotous explosions of colour.
Pliq plays like Tetris in reverse. Rather than manoeuvring shapes to fill spaces in a wall, you’re replacing missing chunks of the wall before it reaches the bottom of the screen. You’ve got to suss out where the gaps are, then tap and swipe to quickly create shapes to fill the holes.
Every time you successfully build a row of gooey jelly cubes, it bursts into a satisfying spray of colour and sound. The more rows you remove at once, the more points you score. Opting to make the wall descend more quickly with the speed-up button also gives your score a boost.
Pliq gently holds your hand at first, but before long the walls descend more rapidly and the shapes become more complicated. You need to clear jelly cubes with locks on them multiple times – which requires foresight and quick reflexes. Blow it and the cubes stack dangerously high. A bomb power-up will give you a little breathing room.
Although Pliq is a game of rounded corners and shimmying shapes, everything clicks with a satisfying snap. It’s an ingenious twist on a familiar concept: filling a space you might not have realised was there.