|
Living Scenes Jigsaw Puzzles
 Jigsaw Puzzles are something that I always find totally relaxing. It used to be that every time I completed a big project and deserved a little pampering, I'd reach for a jigsaw. But life is just too hectic now so the jigsaws are gathering dust. This means I'm always happy to review a jigsaw puzzle package. In fact if you're a busy jigsaw fan then this is definitely the way to go. Completing an electronic jigsaw is logistically simple; it's no hassle to pack up and put aside, it never gets in the way.
Living Scenes Jigsaws caught my eye for two reasons. Firstly it's a package with 'living' or animated puzzles, and that sounded interesting. In all there are 24 puzzles of all sorts including water scenes, still life, animals, cogs; as well as eggs, coins and jellybeans if you want to go mad picking one tiny object from the next. Of these puzzles, half of them are animated and have accompanying sound effects, so the fire dances and crackles in Country Hearth, the Cows moo and chomp away in Bovine Banquet, the butterfly flutters its wings against a background of chirps, and the Popcorn pops!
This was a new experience for me. Although I'm not sure I'd want to spend hours in the company of barnyard noises or popping popcorn, it's certainly novel. I turned off the sound after a while in favour of music of my choice, but it took longer than I expected fitting together the butterfly once I had broken the picture up into a few hundred pieces.
It's quite a challenge. A 'living' picture means that the image on the puzzle pieces is on the move. By this I mean that the delicate portion of butterfly wing is there one second and gone the next; moved on to the next puzzle piece which might have been green leaves a moment ago. Then it's back again (momentarily) and so on. So fitting the picture together takes some concentration. Mesmerising, is a good way to describe it. And if you take to it like I did then there are a good few hours of fun in store, even if you do end up cross-eyed and crazy.
 The second reason Living Scenes caught my attention is because you can import your own pictures in .jpg or .bmp format, so, assuming you have some graphics on your computer, there's a never-ending supply of jigsaws on hand.
I didn't waste any time in digging up some images from the Quandary library of adventure game screenshots. This is a great way to enjoy a jigsaw, working on a picture that is familiar and means something to you. Of course, I used adventure game screenshots but any game would do. Any picture or photograph would do: the family album, your own photography, works of art, anything you can get hold of and rip to pieces (so to speak) then put back together, is a potential candidate.
As well as having 24 ready-to-use pictures, Living Scenes has a range of options. You can vary the difficulty by breaking up the pictures into pieces numbering from as few as 4, right up to 1,500 in some cases. For ambitious players who go for the highest number (smallest pieces) there's a magnifying glass to help out. You can get hints along the way, save your game, choose the background colour and, most importantly, call up a large image of the picture you are working on to examine the detail. There is also an option to adjust the distance at which pieces will snap together and a helpful green light flashes when you get within snapping distance.
The interface is simple, just left click to pick up pieces and turn the mouse wheel or use the arrow keys to rotate them. You can pick up multiple pieces and sort them into one of four sorting trays, and at the initial stages of each puzzle you can even choose to have edge pieces pre-sorted or all pieces oriented correctly.
With the two great drawing cards of animated puzzles and the ability to make your own, Living Scenes is a nice little package. It's going to get plenty of use in this household. It's absorbing solving the animated pictures although I'd recommend not going for too much (or too many pieces) too soon ... take it slowly. I also think it would have been a good idea to put in a couple of colourful and simple pictures to make younger players more welcome, but this is no big deal because you can use your own.
Great fun!
You can download this game from Carolina Road Software.
Copyright © Rosemary Young 2003.
All rights reserved.
System Requirements:
Required:
Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, or XP,"High Color" (16 bit) color setting, 800x600 screen area, 100 megabytes of temporary disk space, Mouse (or notebook equivalent)
Recommended:
"True Color" (32 bit) color setting, 1024x768 screen area, 64 megabytes of RAM (128 megabytes for Windows 2000 and XP), 500 MHz CPU (700 MHz for Windows NT 4.0, 2000, and XP)
|
