Innovative Puzzles & Games

Mightier

• In this age of computer games that are full of explosions, adult content and gore, it is nice to find a game that lets you do some good old fashioned drawing. Mightier is a puzzle game that combines the use of a computer, printer and pencil or marker. The puzzle is printed out in hard copy and then solved by drawing on the page. The solved puzzle is then scanned back into the Mightier game. A puzzle laser takes your solution and carves it into an Actionaut. Your challenge is to use the Actionaut to find all the Datagons which are hidden in various parts of the computer generated landscape. The Actionaut is the figure you use to navigate through your created computer world. The Datagons are small pieces of a puzzle hidden within that world. Each game is different, so the pieces have no set shape, but you must find them all to win the game. They are of a different color than the background. If you have not solved the written portion of the puzzle correctly, the landscape won't be formed correctly, and you won't be able to get to all of your Datagons. The drawing portion can also be done using the Mightier game mouse and the game's drawing interface.

Helipopter

• This is not your normal shoot stuff out of the sky helicopter game. Helipopter combines logical thought as you work your way around puzzles, fly the helicopter forwards, backwards, up and down in an attempt to pop balloons with the chopper's rotor blades. As the game progresses the obstacles, which are really physics based puzzles requiring a bit of time/space calculations, get harder. As an example, on level three, you must move the helicopter through a moving puzzle to get to the balloons. The center of the puzzle is rotating, so you must calculate correctly to move the helicopter past the rotating piece without crashing. This game may be paced a bit too slowly for those who like to play explosive-based arcade games, but this one really makes you think.

Jumble for Kids

• A mainstay in newspapers across the United States for decades, this scaled down version is meant for little solvers, with or without the help of a grown-up. The game starts with the solving of four scrambled words on the left hand side of the page. The letters that end up in the circles are used to solve the question or phrase in the cartoon on the right. Unscramble all of the circle letters and fill in the answer in the bottom row of circles. The cartoon is left in black and white so that it can be colored. Jumble for Kids combines spelling and puzzle solving skills, and can be played at the kitchen table or while driving across the country in the family car.