Car Puzzler

Not suitable for colorblind people !!!

PROS:
- I like puzzlers.
- When better & more distiguishable colors might have been used, could be a nice puzzler.

CONS:
- Sometimes very hard to distiinguish the car & their matching routing point colors on the map.
=> Becomes more of a trial & error game
=> Lots of restartss required
- Some cars can only start when the other cars have done their routes, with the possibility
that the early cars might have blocked off the intented routes of the late starters.
=> Restarts
- Instructions of the map sometimes very unclear.
=> Restarts

OVERALL:
Skip this game when you have problems determining what colors you are looking at.
It can become very frustrating very soon.
Besides this, Still a lot of trial & error and restarts required to finish levels.
It all wears down the fun and brainaches you should have with it . . .

If you are a fan of continuous line puzzles, you'll like this offering by Boris Zapotocky. The basic game has 60 levels. It includes several variations on the genre, multiple lines, mirrored lined, etc. There are a bunch of 'extra' levels that may actually be a tutorial for the level editor which is included. Continuous line puzzles often drive me wild but there is help if you get stuck.

Car Puzzler is a mobile app that's been dumped on Steam as if it was a real PC game (it's not)... it's a cash grab from greedy mobile devs. The game is a very basic maze game where you plot a course through a top down maze, the goal is to complete the journey with as few moves as possible (to save on fuel costs, whatever). The assets appear to be flipped but the developer didn't include any credits, so there's probably some plagiarism going on here on top of all the rest.

Needless to say the kind of maze game where you put your finger on your iPhone screen to draw a path is hardly the kind of thing the PC gaming elite should have to deal with on this platform, especially as a paid product. It's just a nasty cash grab with no value for PC gamers.

From a technical perspective, as a mobile app, this doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.

There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.

The mobile app features lazy low-polygon "retro" assets, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the mid 2000s. It's unclear why the developers weren't able to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets for the mobile app (although the requirement for this to run on low end mobile phones is a factor), and also irrelevant... what matters is that this looks bad as a result of their decisions, a compromise PC gamers shouldn't have to put up with.

The controls can't be customised because the game has such a dumbed down, simplified interface that it's just iPhone screen tapping stuff. The fact that the interface is this dumbed down might be seen as a problem in itself, however... this is a fairly shallow experience if you're the kind of gamer that likes to play games with deep, rich control schemes and interaction. You'll get none of that here.

Because this is a mobile app, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the iPhones that the mobile app was designed for. These are unfortunate handicaps and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was an afterthought for the iPhone developers who are to blame for this. The mobile app is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for mobile phones forces upon a game. Once more, mobile devs have made gaming worse for everyone. I didn't spend thousands on building a gaming rig just so I could pretend it's an iPhone.

These technical defects push this mobile app below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.

The poor quality of this mobile app is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 5 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 50,000 games for gamers to choose from (over 9,000 completely free titles), the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality mobile app is to be expected.

Once more we see greedy mobile devs trying to scam PC gamers. On Steam, this is $5 USD, on app stores, it's $1 USD. Mobile devs must learn PC gamers are not here to be gouged, and can't be expected to pay FIVE TIMES THE PRICE FOR A MOBILE APP just because it's been lazily dumped on Steam. This is unacceptable disrespect for PC gamers. For comparison, the $5 asking price for this game could get you games like "Fallout 4", "Payday 2" or "Mass Effect 3".

Because this is a mobile app, is priced to insult and gouge PC gamers, and because of the other defects, it's impossible to recommend.

Just who do they think we are?

car puzzler is a draw a single line game that has you dragging cars from start to finish, touching their subgoals on the way. you can go back on your selection, so basically unlimited undo, though it doesn't decrease the move counter. there's no move limit, so it only matters on the leaderboards. an optional timer and night mode can be enabled, the former is self-explanatory and the latter isn't only cosmetic, as you'll only be able to see the line around the car, not all over the level.

colored circles indicate goals to be crossed by the car with the same color, white circles are less picky, will accept anyone going over them. you can even choose starting positions and destinations sometimes, and if there's a certain order to follow, it goes from smallest circle to biggest.

it would be a pretty basic affair without twists and turns in the gameplay, so mirrored movement can happen between cars, and sometimes you have to park one to reveal the goals for another. luckily, if you then go back on the path, goals will remain revealed, and sometimes it's actually required to go back and forth a bit because path crossing is a thing and it adds a layer of complexity and possibly confusion.

in general, cars aren't allowed to cross each other's path, but they can on certain levels. current rules can be checked while playing and there's an explanation about path crossing in the main menu. basically, every color has an rgb code and they can be combined as long as they don't exceed (1,1,1), which is white. if you look at this screenshot, it'll be easier to understand. e.g.: red can go over green because it's still just (1,1,0), but red over purple would be (2,0,1) and that won't work.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2325452191

the game has 100 levels, a campaign with 60 of them unlocked 3 at a time, and 40 more available from the start. there's a level editor as well, but without workshop support, and I don't think many will bother with scanning qr codes to access user-made levels.

simple mouse controls even let you zoom in/out, but can't just click a line to go back to that position, nor can individual cars be reset, which makes things more cumbersome than necessary. the graphics are functional, the music wouldn't be bad if there was more, but as it is, it gets repetitive really fast. resolutions and windowed mode via the unity launcher, a single audio on/off toggle (lazy and doesn't get saved between sessions), plus multiple languages. most settings are available while playing the levels themselves.

it's a good enough spin on the well-known genre, not too difficult or long, and the latter is hindered by the lack of easily shareable levels, but it's worth a shot, probably on sale, which happens relatively often anyway.

Relaxing puzzle game with about a hundred levels. The first levels are trivial, but the difficulty increases significantly.

Even though some of the game mechanics could be explained better (or at all), especially specific rules for each level, this does not prevent one from enjoying the game.

Very solid game! 9/10! I loved the complexity of levels and I love the lack of complexity of levels to help boost morale.

I would like to see a hint button or possibly anything to aid in solving the puzzles. I was able to figure them all out - but there was some big struggle points along the way. While it did feel good to overcome them - some players might just quit.

The map editor is also the most unfriendly map editor I have ever come into contact with. I am not sure if a quick video guide explaining it might aid it or if there were some notes/rules to tag onto the options, but it needs to be looked at.

Quick takeaway: Bad design, frustrating controls, unfun gameplay: AVOID.

Details: I like puzzles, so obviously I love puzzle games. Well, *most* puzzle games. Car Puzzler is going right at the top of my list of awful, unfun puzzle games. I made the mistake of buying this game, thinking it had an interesting concept and looked neat.

What I got was a mobile port that is buggy, has frustrating controls, annoying 'music', and some of the least creative puzzle design I have ever experienced. If you're feeling stuck, just ask yourself "what is the most round-about, obnoxious way possible that I could solve this map?" And your answer to that is most likely the solution to that level.

I cannot put words to how much I disliked the experience of playing this game. I have played challenging games: challenge is no problem for me. This isn't that, though. The entire experience is simply frustrating and no fun at all. In the end, I could only keep pushing through because too much time had passed between when I bought the game and when I played it for Steam to allow a refund. And I'm a completionist, so I muscled on.

Even then it took months of poking at it for me to finish this. Again, not because of the challenge, but because of the annoyance and frustration. It wasn't fun, it wasn't clever, it wasn't challenging or creative.

A few times I checked the discussions, and noted that the dev doesn't like the idea of guides/solutions being made or shown for his games. I also saw in another response that he had clearly moved on to his next project. So I have to say I was surprised when the dev contacted me.

I have my account set to private because I'm a rather private person, and I only keep people I know in person on my friend's list. I accepted the dev's friend request so that he could message me because I was curious. Turns out that since I was in the top ten scores (this was when I was roughly halfway through game completion), he was hoping I could leave a review. Mostly so this game would have more than ten reviews so it would be more likely to show up in searches, which would also help his second game garner more attention.

I was polite, thanked him for explaining why he contacted me, then explained my friend's list policy and why I would be removing him from the list. I was frankly a bit floored by the whole thing, though that may be weird to say, which is why I held off on writing this review for quite some time. And clearly the dev had contacted other folks on the scores list, because not only are most of them on his friend's list, but they posted reviews after the time the dev contacted me.

It was probably unnecessary to explain the above, but I wanted people to know what they were getting into, and/or why they should avoid this game, and to have details they would have otherwise not known. That said, sorry for how long this review is.

It's a nice casual puzzle game. Good for all ages. Most of the levels are not too difficult, but there was a few times i was stuck. I'll be playing again soon for the achievements.

Good casual puzzle game.
Very well balanced increasing level difficulty.

Great pickup if you are a fan of puzzle games or like to collect achievements.
Even better if you do both:)

Car Puzzler has clever game mechanics and lots of content.
A charming indie game, definitely recommended, especially if you like tinkering over riddles.

Those puzzless are a lot damn harder, than you would think :)
Brings some real brain challenges for the favourable price.

An interesting puzzle game with a difficulty average/low (but with few levels quite hard). I solved the 60 levels in about 4/5 hours: usually they are quite easy and you can solve them after few attempts without too much thinking.

PROs:
- Many levels (60 of the base game plus about 40 extra)
- Many different game mechanics (mirrored moves, checkpoints order, etc...)

CONs
- Sometime the many different mechanics are confusing (I discovered only after many games that there is a button that shows the rules of the level!)
- The background music is nice but after a while it becomes repetitive.
- The specific rules used in the level should appear automatically when you start it.

Overall the game is not a masterpiece but it is worthy the price especially if discounted.

Very interesting and easy to understand game. There are easy levels where new mechanic or new rule is introduced and then there is a challenge when that new rule as well as other known rules are applied. When you solve any level it is a good idea to increase the difficulty of the same level by using timer or using night mode where you have to not only thing of the solution but also remember path you already used in your solution (preferably going through a batch of level first so that you dont remember your solutions perfectly). This two modes increased the challenge and I was surprised realizing that I found new solutions just because I got "lost" because of the night mode. Since there is a level editor and option to share your levels with others there are a lot of problems to solve. Do not underestimate the seemingly easy problem of finding a path from one point to another.

The controls are so bad, you keep going in directions you didn't intend. Very infuriating.

Not just another game for babies, levels are often pretty challenging. Cool stuff!

Relaxing puzzle game, worth it's price. Some of the levels are real challenge. I recommend this game.