Spin It!

Summary

Have you ever been in a situation in which you’re on the go somewhere and just want to kill some time? A short, easy game is always the answer to this given problem for me—and judging by the positive ratings in the Market, Spin It! might be just the ticket. So… let’s give it a shot!

Spin It! is a logical game for Android. The goal is quite simply to ensure that the tiles lying on the playing field are all the same color. In order to do so you have to mark the tiles in one of the two colors with a continuous path. Once you’ve managed this you turn the tiles over by clicking once, so that all the tiles are of the same color.

The tricky part is to mark all the tiles of the color of your choice without winding up in a dead-end: that is to say, to avoid drawing a path that doesn't go any further at one point. You can’t retrace your steps either, as the path can’t cross over itself.

If you’re having a hard time imagining what all this might actually look like, take a peek at the video, it should clear things up. Spin It! also provides a short tutorial which elaborates on the gameplay.

There are a lot of different levels to choose from. You have to access the levels online, but you can save them on to your phone, so that you can play when you’re offline, too.

I was especially impressed to see that there’s also an option of designing levels yourself. They can then be uploaded to a server so that other players can access them and try them out.

Spin It!‘s gameplay is a simple but very addictive one. And because new levels are constantly being designed and uploaded, so I predict that you won’t ever run out of new levels to tackle.

The following options are listed in the app’s main menu:

Play
Settings
Tutorial
Exit
And the following options are listed under Play:

Newest
Advanced Search
Editor
Local

Newest lets you access the newest levels designed by other players. As mentioned, these can be accessed online, and by pressing on a preview for a long time and selecting “Save the panel on local” you can also save levels to your phone. You can access your offline level via Local under the Play menu. To start a level, just click on it.

You can start drawing the path by clicking into the playing field. Every tile must be marked individually. If you want to draw a straight line all you have to do is click on the place where you want it to end. You can continue drawing it by clicking on the next tile, in the direction of where you want the path to go. Once you’ve managed to select all the same-colored tiles, press on the green button in order to flip them over. If you feel you’ve botched the path-drawing somewhat: click on the red button to delete everything and start anew. If you successfully complete a level you can rate the level of difficulty. Within the list of available levels you can tell which ones you’ve already completed by the green tick.

Advanced Search also allows you to search for levels. You can search for levels according to their degree of difficulty, size, or for completed/uncompleted levels.

You’ll also find the Editor in the Play menu: this allows you to create your own levels. Choose how big your level should be (up to 12 across / 9 down) and select the color by clicking. Prior to being able to publish a level you have to prove that it’s crack-able, which means you have to play and solve it yourself first. This ensures that all levels are solvable.

You can switch Music, Sound effects, Vibrations, and Shakes on or off under Settings, as well as change the colors of the tiles and the path.

You’ll find a brief intro as well as FAQs under Tutorial—really useful in case any questions come up.

Bottom line:
Spin It! is a great game for when you want to kill some time, although it might just turn out that you wind up playing for longer than you had intended. It provides very easy levels as well as real brain-busters—and the bigger the fan community becomes, the more levels will be available.

I experienced no problems with Spin It!... it also ran very smoothly.

Spin It! can be downloaded for € 0,99.