PuzzleManiak finds plenty of ways to destroy your free time and confounds your brain cells.
This app should really be called "20 different brain benders packed into one tight, little package," but developers pick the whole brevity thing for App Store names. PuzzleManiak is chock full of puzzles that will make you wrinkle your brow in frustration and keep you coming back for more. It's ideal for long lines at the DMV, the waiting room at the dentist, or pretty much whenever you need to kill some time.
The puzzles range from games you might be familiar with, like Sudoku, to ones that make particularly good use of the touchscreen, like Untangle. The latter features several points connected by lines; you have to untangle the lines by rearranging them so they don't cross. It starts out fairly easy, but turns into a frustratingly difficult--albeit fun--crisscrossing cat's cradle with each new level.
Many of these games have complex rules, and the app only gives you rudimentary instructions for each. All of the games are played by tapping on the screen or dragging elements around. Sudoku is easy to figure out by trial and error tapping, but games like Bridges are much harder to jump right into. It's also a tad unstable and tends to crash, which can be annoying in the middle of a game.
But PuzzleManiak redeems itself with a fairly robust social element; each puzzle has a daily challenge that pits your scores against other players around the world, and the online leaderboards track how you're doing. If you win a daily challenge, you're given 1000 points. There's also a daily special, challenging you to beat other PuzzleManiak players at a random puzzle.
Wide variery of differet games. Daily challenges. Online leaderboard.
Instructions not always clear. Crashes sometimes during gameplay.
