LetsTans – Let’s do what?

We’ve come across this before.  A situation where the app name seemingly has nothing to do with anything.  Well with a little explanation this one actually makes perfect sense.  I took the time to read the intro in the game and it educated me.  First off this game is based on Tansgram which is game that is a couple of centuries old.  Now do you see where they got the ‘Tans’ part of the app name?  This leave ‘Lets’ which is only there to say “Let’s Tans”.  Tans are actually the pieces of the puzzle your trying to solve.  Make’s even more sense now, or it should!

Main Menu

The idea behind the game is simple but doing it is not always so simple.  All you need to do is place the pieces of the puzzle together to make the shape on the screen.  Simple right?  If you’re like me then sometimes you get lucky but other times you place the pieces over and over again.  There are two versions of the game out in the iTunes store.  A lite (aka free) version and the full version.  The lite version boasts 21 levels spread out over three game styles (that’s 7 levels per style for those who don’t want to do the math) while the full version has 210 levels spread out over the three game styles.  I’ll let you do the math for the full version on your own, consider it homework.

Classic Game

I’m only showing you screen shots from the ‘Classic’ game and that’s only because I don’t want this to be nothing but screen shots.  All three games are equally challenging in their own unique ways.  The Classic game has you rotating and flipping colored pieces to place them together to form the shape on the screen.  As you can imagine this can be a little tricky and the shapes will only get more challenging as the game progresses.  The Replica game has a screen full of the colored pieces and a shape left blank.  You have to highlight all of the various pieces where they currently lye in order to make the shape.  The Arcade game is slightly different yet again, but I’m not going to explain that one.  I want to leave something for you to discover on your own.

Options

The options screen has the basic stuff that is needed for a game of this type.  No extra fluff which is fine with this reviewer.  In a time where everything is tied into everything else, stand along applications are a welcome sight.  I do like the fact that you can increase or decrease the number of hints.  It’ll be nice to have more hints the higher up you go in the levels.  Remember on the full version you have 70 levels per game style.  That’s going to keep you busy for a while!  The only thing on this screen that I have a question about is the ‘Player’.  I wasn’t able to figure out if you could change the name of the player.  I see that you can change to a guest player, which is nice for when the wife wants to play it.  I would like to see the ability to change the name and maybe have multiple players.  This is not a fault by any means just something I would like to see.

Cost: Full = $1.99 (was on sale for $.99 while I was writing this review), Lite = Free

What I thought in a nutshell!
Use-ability
How user friendly is the game and its interface?
Game Play
How smooth and well crafted is the flow of the game?
Neat Factor
Will this game wow you?

Overall
How did it fair overall?