Yosumin!™

Interesting puzzle game with a unique mechanic that I don't believe I've seen elsewhere. Takes the fun of dragging and selecting files on your desktop and makes it into a game.

It's a simple and fun little game with nice graphics and voices.

I'm learning Japanese and wanted to take a break from translating JRPG dialogue. I wanted something small and simple where I could learn some new Japanese words, but quickly get to a point in which I had learned the games limited vocabulary. This its the spot.

For great justice. The golden squirrel power armor is a real equalizer.

this is a really cute game thats easy to pick up and play, then the difficulty spikes and it becomes unfun

the game play is not varied enough and the power-ups take too long to unlock to merit this frustration - if its on sale for a buck or two id say grab it, but dont spent more than two - five out of ten cheese wheels

Charming, cute, and ruthlessly difficult if you don't keep your wits about you!

The word I keep coming back to for Yosumin! is "soothing". So it's cute, colourful, and fundamentally kid-friendly-- so what? It's a fun and dangerously addictive match-puzzle experience that neither patronises nor overdramatises. Not since Thomas Was Alone did I feel such attachment to colourful geometric shapes...

As a lover of puzzle games, I picked up Yosumin long ago. I was surprised to see Square Enix's name on the title but figured I give it a try. What I discovered is an okay puzzler that needs a lil more polish.

Before the game even starts, one of the first problems is that you cannot adjust the resolution of this game. You either go fullscreen or a small window. I know the game is old, but even just 1 or 2 different resolution choices would have been nice. Second, if you find yourself pressing the "esc" key, you close the game automatically.

Now onto the gameplay. The story is some beautiful glass mirror or painting has been shattered and you have to collect the shards to fix it. Yosumin puts you in a box stage with a bunch of different color pieces. The object of the game is to drag corresponding pieces to make a square or rectangle with the same color at each point. Creating perfect squares net you bonus points and most stage objectives just want you to collect particular colors.

The problem is, this gameplay gets stale pretty quickly. I mean sure, they can add more color pieces as you get further into the game, but there's nothing really in there to shake up the gameplay. Maybe if they added power-ups/downs, or if the pieces and backgrounds were animated, they game could hold your attention for a lil longer. But on its on, you may give it a half an hour at most until you find yourself losing interest.

Final verdict? If you like puzzle games and can get this cheap, this may hold your interest for a bit, but you honestly can avoid this and look for something better. Thanks for reading!

Pros:
+ Adorable and brightly colored artwork. I especially liked the Treats.
+ I loved the sound effects. As annoying as the Badmin could be, their giggle was cute.
+ Not too difficult to learn how to play.
+ The sound effects and music have separate volume controls. I ended up turning the music entirely off because the way it sped up as time ran out made me too anxious.

Cons:
- Very repetative. Once the Boss Badmin has been introduced, you've seen everything truly new that this game is going to throw at you.
- The second-to-last level is utterly evil. You're required to get four Yosumin in order to beat it. Since getting a Yosumin requires that all four corners have the same color, and since colors are placed pretty much at random, getting those four Yosumin takes a while. Beating that level requires a lot of luck, patience, and a good enough eye to make enough squares and rectangles to keep time from running out until you can finally get all four Yosumin.
- Some aspects of the game aren't explained very well (or at all). For example, I don't think it's every mentioned that the multi-colored stained glass pieces function the same way as gold Yosumin pieces - they're wildcards that can be any color you need in order to make a square/rectangle. Also, I thought using the Treats cost Yosumin, but the Yosumin counts below the Treats were (I think) just the total number of each Yosumin you had to collect before those Treats became available.

It's an okay game, but very, very repetive (I say this as someone who enjoys Puzzle Quest). The story and final stained glass art didn't make up for that.

I bought Yosumin because I was looking for a new puzzle game in the same vein as all those Match-3 games. (That is, you've got a screen full of gems or ice-cream or whatever and you have to line up three in a row of the same colour to get them to disappear). The reason I settled on this one was because it's made by Square-Enix, famous for Final Fantasy and other great RPGs and I was wondering what their take on a puzzle game would be.

Turns out, not really any different than anyone else's puzzle games. In Yosumin, instead of trying to match 3 of the same, you have to match 4, but not in a row, they just have to form the corners of a rectangle. Yes, it's a game about forming rectangles. Sounds boring as hell, but it works alright, mostly. Each level you're given different goals like make 4 small rectangles, or 2 of each colour, or whatever, so there's a bit of variety.

There are a couple of gameplay mechanics that I think just don't work in this game's favour. One is that as you progress through the game you unlock more coloured blocks, so there are less and less possibly rectangles to form. I get that games have to get harder as you go along, but you'll feel less like you're solving puzzles then being at the mercy of whatever random blocks fall your way. Many times there'll be just the one rectangle possible and you'll be scrambling to find it until the game gives up and gives you a hint. The reason you'll be scrambling is the second problem, each level is timed, and if you don't make it in time, it's game over. Not only that, but as your timer runs low, they give you that panic-inducing sped up music to really help stress you out.

So I found that the further into the game I got, the less fun I was having. Maybe I'm just biased against puzzle games with a timer. I don't like having to think fast. I kept playing anyway for quite a while just because as you play you unlock pieces of a stained glass window and I really wanted to complete it. But in the end it wasn't enough to combat the stress it was causing me.

So I don't recommend this game. It's not the worst puzzle game, but it's not particularly clever or unique either, and those flaws I mentioned are enough of a turn off. 2/5 stars. Buy it only if you're a super fan of rectangles.

If you love puzzle game's like Candy Crush,Tetris Attack or you are just a fan of puzzle game's this is a great one for you. :D

The game is average, but the music is awesome. I would find myself losing levels on purpose to listen to the running out of time music, and the terrible rap sung by the final boss had me laughing for a while.
Worth buying just to strip the audio out and put onto your ipod

For someone looking for a time wasting, no thinking puzzle game, this game may be something your ineterested in. however, after putting in about 10-12 hours and finishing the game, this game isn't something I can recommend to everyone.

The game is incredibly repetitive, there's about 5 'levels' each one has 7 or 8 zones and each level follows the same pattern to those zones. Collect X amount of coloured blocks in zone 1, make 4 squares in zone 2, collect X amount of stained glass peices, etc..... It's pretty well the same each level, except another colour is introduced.

You are also given different powers to help each level, but those powers are very weak and don't see to improve much on what they say they are suppose to improve (not to a noticable level anyways).

There are things that pop up in the puzzle to make it more difficult. Theres a character that shuffles all the blocks (actually surprisingly helpful instead of a problem). As well there can be bigger blocks of various sizes that can be difficult to remove.

Again this game is incredibly simple. However if thats the type of puzzle game your looking for, you may want to give this a try.

If you like puzzle games and torturing yourself with repetitive tasks for over 250 levels, this is the game for you! Make squares and rectangles to clear objectives and move on in the game to complete a giant stained glass mirror. I hated myself for forcing myself to play through this abomination of a game but having now completed it, there is a sense of immense satisfaction. 10/10 Would never play again.

With the amount of similar cheaper games running in portable touch devices, unless it's on sale, I see no reason why you'd buy this, anyway here's my quick list of pros/cons:

Pros :
- Fun
- Cute graphics
- Well finished

Cons:
- has no trade card drop
- has no achievements
- expensive for what it is

A fun and addicting little puzzle game. It's not particularly difficult but it can challenge your ability to recognize patterns. The gameplay is simple: make squares/rectangles where all 4 corners are the same color blocks to clear them and gain points.

If you're looking for a simple pick up and play puzzle game akin to bejeweled this might be a good pick for you.

On a 16:9 monitor the game seems to run at 800x600 stretched in full screen, but with weird letterboxing on all sides. There are no scaling options, your only options are to play it in a tiny window at correct scale or full screen with odd stretching issues (jagged lines, text rendering off screen).

Another variant on the block puzzler genre, Yosumin! sees you play on a 9x9 grid of blocks where you have to click on four blocks of the same shape/colour to describe the corners of a square or rectangle, which transforms all blocks within that space into the same colour as the selected corner blocks before removing all those blocks then replacing them with another mix of blocks. BLOCKS!

Each stage sets you objectives, ranging from the simplistic, like removing a quota of specific coloured blocks, to the more challenging, such as clearing an entire board with one move (this move being where the game gets its name, in the same way Tetris is the name given to clearing the maximum of four lines in a single drop), with each stage being cleared by completing all of these objectives.

The whole things starts off at a very basic, and even mundane degree of difficulty as you breeze through the majority of the opening stages in the space of a couple of minutes, but by the final quarter or so of the game this is turned on its head as the ever strangling time limit can soon grind you down unless you have very sharp eyes or a lot of luck finding the right blocks to match. This deceptively high difficulty spike of the final stages seems very at odds with the über casual, child-friendly presentation of every aspect of the title and may see many quit before reaching the end, even with the extra added help of bonus unlocks which act as perks to aid in varying elements of play.

But even if you do quit by then, ultimately you're not really going to miss out on all that much. The opening few hours play much the same as the final hours save for some minor added elements and complications added to proceedings that actually change things very little of the game beyond its initial premise. So a pretty throwaway, repetitive, yet inoffensive title (except for maybe the audio, which you might want to mute) that might not stick with you too long after you play it, but which still holds some fun for those looking for their quick puzzle fix to dip in and out of. Pick it up when it's cheap, play it, enjoy it a little, forget about it, move on with your life. Yosumin!

Good game for puzzle game lovers. It has the same basic concept as most other puzzle games (making matches), but it's got a unique take on match-making. You have to find rectangular patterns on the game board. It's not a game that you'll blow through in an hour, so it's worth it at its regular price. The music is peppy and upbeat, and I haven't gotten sick of it, so that says something good. The graphics are bright and cheerful, and the little faces on each of the pieces are adorable.

New obstacles and game pieces show up at a decent pace. There's enough variety in objectives for each level (like matching a certain amount of certain colored pieces, making square matches, making small, standard, or large sets), but the objectives repeat a bit too much and start to feel samey. While this game isn't on the same level as Clash of Heroes and Critter Crunch, it's still a fun, lighthearted puzzle game that's worth your time.

This was a fun little game. When Square-Enix steps out of their RPG comfort zone, I'm usually impressed.

There's not much story: a stained glass window of importance to the oddly-shaped creatures shatters, and it's up to Yellowmin and his friends to recover the fragments. To win puzzles, you must create squares using the same shape for all four corners of a square. Each level demands certain parameters for the square, ranging from squares made up of a particular color to Yosumins (using the entire board as a square).

The graphics are bright, colorful, and clear. There were no issues with how the game presented itself, and the tone stayed relatively consistent throughout the story mode. Music was... meh. There is one level with an atrocious fake rap, but the majority of background music was just that: background.

I would recommend this to puzzle gamers looking for a decent challenge. It's not the best puzzle game I've ever played, but it was worth playing.

Like to puzzle a bit in between things? This is a fun little game to fill spaces of boredom when waiting for a dungeongroup in WoW or mining in EVE :)

The puzzle mechanic here is so simple and requires more luck than skill. There are so many better puzzlers out there.