Pandora's Box

I've always had a soft spot for a good puzzle game. The first one
that I saw and enjoyed was Cliff Johnson's Fool's Errand on the
Atari ST back in the early 90s. Its varied puzzles (jigsaws,
visual puzzles, codes, word searches etc) were built around an
exotic storyline and culminated in a final 'map' puzzle which
incorporated all the previous puzzles in its design.

Cliff turned out to be a keen programmer of this type of game
because he also brought out Puzzle Gallery: At The Carnival.
Meant to be the first in a series which never developed, it had
less colourful graphics but, like Fool's Errand, used different
puzzle types to give variety. I don't know if it had a final
'boss' puzzle because I didn't manage to finish it. Some of the
puzzles were so obscure to me (find 20 American car models in a
word search) that I couldn't complete it. I may go back to it one
day, though.


Next came Are We There Yet? which was visually impressive but even
more oriented towards America because its storyline involved a car
trip from state to state. It didn't live up to Fool's Errand but I
persisted with it because there wasn't anything better about. Since 
then, nothing similar has come out - until last year when
Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of Tetris, brought out Pandora's Box.
The basic storyline is slightly different from the traditional one
- in Alexey's version, when Pandora opened the box, she released
seven spirits of chaos and mischief - the Tricksters whose ranks
include Puck and Ananzi the Spider. The player must capture each
of them and pop them back in the box by solving a batch of
puzzles. There are ten different styles over seven levels - image
hole, find and fill, focus point, interlock, Jesse's strips, lens
bender, outer layer, overlap, rotascope and slices. Some of these
puzzle types are introduced some way into the game - for instance,
you'll find Jesse's strips on Level 2, lens bender doesn't turn up
until level 4 or interlock until level 6.

To catch each trickster, ten puzzles must be solved in each of
five cities, followed by a final 'boss' puzzle where the trickster
is finally captured. The final puzzle is a toughie and may have
several sections eg overlap followed by focus point. There is a
story connected with each character and, in each city, one
symbolic piece of that entity's story - and thus his/her section
of the box - is found. For instance, for Maui, these symbols were
a boat, gull, fish hook and fish. Each of these is effectively
hidden 'behind' a puzzle.  All the puzzles are timed and some
offer a bonus - solve them within a certain time and you'll be
told which puzzle the symbol is behind. This means that if you
want, you can play only those puzzles necessary to find the
symbol. But why would you want to miss any out? Once you finish a
city's puzzles, you go back to the main screen and pick another
city to which to travel.

Incidentally, once you capture a trickster, any puzzles that you
haven't solved in his section are closed to you, so if you want to
play ALL of them (as I did), don't complete the boss puzzle until
you've done the 50 basic ones connected to that character.
Fortunately there is a save game option if you want to go back a
bit, but the game autosaves when you quit and this is normally all
you'll need (unless, of course, you accidentally 'close off' a
city)

The puzzles are very entertaining and there's enough variety that
you won't get bored. They all start fairly simply but get more
complex as the game progresses. All the puzzles should be solved 
in less 15 minutes; I've almost finished it and only two have
taken longer. Rotascope Puzzles for example, where you rotate 
the pieces of a tiled picture around concentric circles, start 
with just three rings but build up to five rings by level 6.  
Two more make quite a difference! The Find and Fill puzzles, 
where you fill the outlines of hidden objects, contain
more complex items and rotate rather than being static. Image
Hole, where you match moving holes to parts of a picture
underneath, become very complex as their underlying pictures
become more detailed and the holes smaller.

At the side of the screen is your inventory - a misnomer for icons
showing the number of puzzles solved and the number of bonuses you

have scored. You can use these to get a hint or to solve a puzzle
if you get completely stuck.

On their own, these puzzles would be good fun, but linked into a
story, which gives them some meaning, they are even more
entertaining. I've been looking for a game like this for a long
time and while it isn't as inventive as Fool's Errand, it comes
closer than any other game I've seen. It's also available at a
very good price - I think PC World now have it for under œ15.
Highly recommended.

                                             Sue







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