3D Gallery Puzzle

by Yan Matusevich on 6/25/10 8:00 AM

Tested version: 1.0
Latest version: 1.5
Requires Android: from 1.5

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Summary

The puzzle is a game with a lot of history. All the way back in 1763, the puzzle was invented by a British engraver named John Spilsbury. He had cut up a map of Great Britain along the borders between the different counties on a wooden block. The player’s goal was to put the map back together correctly. Puzzles with teath-like edges came about a bit later in the 19th century.

In 3D Gallery Puzzle you’re playing with basically the same type of puzzle as made by John Spilsbury out of his wooden block. These pieces are squares instead of the usual toothed puzzle pieces. Not that it makes the game any less fun, right?

Features & Use

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As you can tell from the name, 3D Gallery Puzzle is a puzzle game for Android phones. You can play with default pictures included in the game or use any of your own pictures saved to your Android phone. You can also adjust the size of the puzzle board. Three different puzzle sizes are available: 3x4, 4x6 and 6x8. The number of puzzle pieces is determined by the size of the puzzle board. This game can become a real challenge when played in the highest difficulty level with a 6x8 puzzle grid.

3D Gallery Puzzle is visually very nice. The game has 3D animation, which means that your puzzle pieces can spin and turn. Stars appear on the screen when you’ve solved the puzzle correctly. The entire game is also accompanied by great background music.

3D Gallery Puzzle should warm the heart of any puzzle enthusiast as far as I can tell. Although I’m not a puzzle maniac, I can’t see how anyone could make a better puzzle app for Android. A small drawback is that you can’t select to puzzle a specific picture. You have to select an entire folder instead and skip through your pictures before you can find the one you were looking for.

Screen & Controls

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On the 3D Gallery Puzzle main screen you’ll find all of the most important options. First off, you can select the source for your puzzle pictures. Here you can select between:

My Gallery – Shuffle
My Gallery – Manual Selection
Built-in Images

With the first option, your puzzle motifs are automatically selected at random from pictures saved to your phone. With Manual Selection, you can select a specific folder to be used for puzzle pictures. I actually liked the built-in pictures that come with 3D Gallery Puzzle. They are very rich in variety as you can tell from the screenshots.

The next option is the difficult level, which can be adjusted with the help of a slide bar. The higher the difficult level, the more pieces there are in a puzzle.

Using the three buttons on the bottom left, you can turn the sound and help function on/off as well as select determine your puzzle grid size. Placing boxes around the puzzle pieces is all the help feature really does. If you turn off the boxes, it is more difficult to distinguish the individual puzzle pieces and solve the entire puzzle. The puzzle begins by pressing the Go button. An uploaded picture gets cut up into pieces according to the selected difficulty level and grid size. To make a move, first click on the puzzle piece you’d like to move and then on apiece that’s located on the board. The pieces then switch places. You’ll hear a sound and the help box will disappear if your pieces match up.

You have following options via the menu button: