I’ve always enjoyed puzzles and nothing used to give me greater pleasure as a child than to pretend that I was James Bond, with two minutes to save the world by cracking a code set by an evil genius; I’m now 27 and while I still hold out hope that MI6 may one day knock on my door with a job offer, my code-breaking is done on a more realistic platform: my iPad.
Code Guess HD is a fun and challenging app that has taken the iPhone world by storm with over 410,000 downloads and is now making its way over to the iPad. It’s based around the gameplay of the classic ‘Mastermind’, with four pegs that you place on the board to attempt to break the code set by either the app or the person that you are playing against.
There are four modes in which you can play:
- The ‘Classic’ Mode: start your play from an empty board.
- The exclusive ‘Quiz’ Mode, with an infinite number of plays and 3 different levels of difficulty. From the automatically generated guesses, only one solution is remaining: will you be quick enough to discover it?
- The 2-Players ‘Code Fight’ standard mode: The Code Setter sets the code, then the Code Breaker try to discover it.
- The 2-Players ‘Code Fight’ expert mode: In this exclusive game, the Code Setter does not set the code, but has to discover it by selecting each answer by a process of elimination.
I really like the ‘Trashcan’ element of the game, which dims all of the pegs of a given color to make solving the code easier. The ‘Teacher’ function is also fun, as it is essentially an analysis tool that shows the optimal guesses and the solution in set partitions, helping you learn and craft your strategy for future games.
Summary
This is a very fun game that will challenge your brainpower as well as keep you amused on long journeys; just make sure that you keep looking over your shoulder for any government spooks…
Pros
- The graphics are simple and engaging and look especially impressive in HD.
- The music is pretty quirky but it can be turned off for a silent ‘Zen’ mode.
- The iPad app has a 50% discovery discount for a limited time.
Cons
It can be fairly addictive and very frustrating if you can’t work out a puzzle, especially if you’re playing against a friend!
