Unheart

Unheart is one such title I've been meaning to feature for far too long. It's actually quite new and was only released in 2014 at Silly Venture by Masters of Electric City. Based on the original PC game, Heartlight which happily mixes Sokoban with a dollop of Boulder Dash to produce a riveting and refreshing brain teasing challenge.

You are a dwarf who enjoys digging his way through caves looking for love hearts. Watch out for falling rocks that might block your path or a head-crushing blow. You might even come upon a bomb as you crawl through the soft soil but, be careful, because these will detonate when impacting something hard, like a wall or rock. Heck, there are even balloons that will float upwards potentially pushing whatever gets in their way...

Hitting the ESC key causes our dwarf to humorously explode so we can restart the level. Also featured is a level-skip function which allows us to bypass mind-destroying levels with the option of coming back to them later (yeah right). The graphics are simple yet superbly detailed with a gorgeous palette. The status bar displayed in overscan, which is always going to be a great thing for the obvious reasons. Now, the music is totally breathtaking and suits the game perfectly. But why aren't there more?

Boulder Dash fans should look elsewhere because this is a Sokoban game and a brilliant take on the idea too. The difficulty generally remains a constant throughout - high - with cunning map designs causing the most intense problems to overcome. Thankfully, with unlimited retries and the ability to skip troublesome levels, this is a game you will keep on coming back to. Unheart is a challenging and distinctively brilliant puzzler. One of the beST.

LINKS

 - A download is available from Demozoo which also links into Silly Venture and more!