Puzzle

Enjoy the classic marble shooting games where you're centralised and have to shoot and match gem colours to prevent the trail from hitting the end? You might want to check out Sparkle for Windows Phone 8, which is a game that will take to your liking and offer up many hours of gameplay to pass the time.

The popular Windows Mobile game HexaLines now breathes fresh air on the Windows Store as a Windows 8 title. We last looked at HexaLines with the news of the strategic game making its way to both Windows Phone and the desktop stores. The aim of the game is to expand by deploying new hexagons (all players start from the centre) and attempting to cut off or annihilate enemy colours.

PopCap Games may be best known for their sublime Plants vs. Zombies (on sale for $2.99 this week!), but they actually produce a number of stellar franchises like Peggle and Zuma. We interviewed PopCap about those two series coming to Windows Phone last year, and we’ll continue to ask about them whenever we can. PopCap seems to work on one game for one platform at a time, and they’ve just completed a new Xbox Live Arcade release: Zuma’s Revenge. It just came out yesterday, but I’ve been playing the game for a week now in order to bring you this review.

The original Zuma Deluxe was an XBLA launch title way back in 2006. Basically an enhanced clone of classic arcade game Puzz Loop (aka Magnetica), the Zuma games put players in control of a stationary frog who can rotate in any direction and shoot colored balls from his mouth. In each level, more balls roll on-screen along one or more paths. The frog’s job is to stop them from reaching the goal at the path’s end by quickly making as many colored matches as possible. It’s sort of like Bubble Town 2 but much, much better and more varied.

Head past the break for our full impressions and more screenshots.

Screenshots from Droplitz Delight coming to Windows Phone on May 23

Last month, WPCentral broke the news of three new Game House titles coming to Xbox Live: Droplitz Delight, Sally’s Spa, and Tiki Towers 2. We’re now delighted to reveal the official release date and exclusive first screenshots of Droplitz Delight on Windows Phone. It’s coming Wednesday, May 23 for just 99 cents!

Droplitz Delight is the mobile-exclusive sequel to XBLA and Steam puzzler Droplitz. In each level, players are tasked with guiding the adorable liquid droplitz from the top of the screen to the bottom. You’ll have to quickly rotate a bunch of tiles in order to create a safe path for the little liquids, and then do it all again after the old path disappears.

Gameplay modes like the 40-level Target Quest, Dash, Classic, and Free Play should accommodate a variety of play styles. Delight features multiple Achievements for playing and completing the main Target Quest mode, unlike Game House’s previous puzzle game Collapse!, whose Achievements are the most quickly obtainable of any Windows Phone title. Nice to see Game House taking player feedback into account.

Droplitz Delight launches on May 23 and will cost 99 cents. Preceding it will be geoDefense Swarm on May 16.

Last year WPCentral asked our readers what mobile games they’d most like to see ported to Windows Phone. One highly-requested game was Cut the Rope from Chillingo. Well, we’re getting one step closer to seeing that happen. WPCentral is pleased to announce that Chillingo has officially begun to support Windows Phone. Their first game: Feed Me Oil, from developer Holy Water Games.

Feed Me Oil is a physics puzzle game that closely resembles Enigmo. The player’s job is to get a bunch of dropping oil into the mouths of gigantic creatures. You’ll use a variety of gadgets to do so, pushing, pulling, and otherwise directing the flow of oil. While the gameplay may be somewhat familiar to puzzle fans, Feed Me Oil’s creative art design is far more appealing than Enigmo’s sterile setting.

The Windows Phone version of Feed Me Oil will include all of the original iPhone version’s levels, plus a new chapter with “fun new game elements.” Gotta love new content! It’s due out within the next month or two and will probably cost $2.99. Hopefully this is just the first of many awesome games in store from Chillingo!

Should you enjoy Portal on the consoles and PC, then you'll love Portals 2D (by Weesals) on your Windows Phone. Taking an interesting 2D birds-eye route, this indie title feels like a unique game due to the different camera angle from 1st person to the clouds. The concept is exactly the same with cubes, portals, lasers, a portal gun and the requirement of a quick thinking mind.

The most intriguing feature of this Portals 2D is not the superb graphics (vaguely reminiscent of GTA China Town Wars?), but the price - it's available for absolutely nothing until February 7th. You can download Portals 2D from the Marketplace. Note that there are two entries for this app, be sure to download the one we link to.

Thanks gh8421 for the tip!

While iOS hit Cut the Rope has yet to migrate to Windows Phone, today we get the next best thing with Spider Jack, an Xbox Live title from developer MaxNick and EA Games. Yes, EA is still apparently making Windows Phone games (that aren’t exclusive to Nokia handsets).

The goal in Spider Jack is to get the titular arachnid to his food. To do this, you attach the spider’s thread to a knob. He’ll then swing around, collecting anything he touches. You’ll also need to cut the rope, err, thread in order to drop Jack onto items. With 75 levels (many with multiple possible solutions), this should be a fun physics-based puzzler that stands out from other games on the platform - if not the title that inspired it.

Spider Jack costs $2.99 and there is a free trial. Swing over here on the Marketplace to get it.