Spb Puzzle for Symbian S60 & Windows Mobile Professional

Spb Softwarehouse combined a classical “old” game -in this case the jigsaw puzzle- with modern mobile technology, resulting in a brand new game called Spb Puzzle with an interesting gameplay. The article below will provide a brief overview of this new game, and will highlight on several features. The article will end with some first conclusion, and you might want to check out some considerations as well.

“A jigsaw puzzle is a tiling puzzle that requires the assembly of numerous small, often oddly shaped, interlocking and tessellating pieces. Each piece has a small part of a picture on it; when complete, a jigsaw puzzle produces a complete picture. In some cases more advanced types have appeared on the market, such as spherical Jigsaws and puzzles showing Optical Illusions.” [ref01]

How can you transform such a cardbord jigsaw puzzle onto a touch screen of  Symbian S60 or Windows Mobile Phone ? Well Spb softwarehouse had some important design key points:

“Building on the strengths of the classical jigsaw puzzle by using high-quality pictures;

Creating the simplest interface possible, minimizing the number of unnecessary and distracting details;

Keeping the game simple and attractive;” [ref02]

With these design keypoints in mind, lets have a look at the application itself. Below a step by step walk through will be provided, while some key features are highlighted.

Spb Puzzle overview

When downloading the installer of Spb Puzzle I was a little surprised by its large size of 13 MB, resulting in 7,2 MB (VGA)  in the ROM after installation on my HTC Touch Diamond 2. Opening the application from the start menu, directly shows me a clever designed logo, and a great flash screen with Leonardo Davinci’s Vitruvian Man as a background and Spb Puzzle as title on top of it.

If I want to start a new game there are three options (on first use) available at the carousel like homescreen we saw in Spb Mobile Shell 3:

1. Select an imagepack;
2. Select a custom image from your device;
3. Download a new imagepack;

Let me emphasize that the user interface is really intuitive, and Spb Softwarehouse has a solid track record in designing simple but very efficient user interfaces. with left right swipe gestures you can easily switch between the different options available.  However if you download and install a new imagepack, an additional panel is added to the interface. At some point in time with X panels available it would make sense to add a panel view like we are used from the Sony Xperia X1 and Spb Mobile Shell 3.

After this little sidestep, you can either choose an available imagepack (= a set of puzzles around a topic), or simply download a new imagepack.  Selec “Load new packs from internet” and your webbrowser is automatically opened and a list of imagepacks appears. Simply select one for dowloading (in the cab-installer-format), and open the file after download. Restart Spb Puzzle and you are good to go with the new imagepack.

“On release date around 3-5 additional puzzle packs will be available. Meanwhile a lot of new great packs are still in development and will become available bit a little later. ” [ref02]

Custom or personalized puzzles

Spb Softwarehouse has added a personalized approach in the development of Spb Puzzle. Users can create a puzzle from a photo taken with the cameria on the device. So just take a picture a your car, your girlfriend, your pet or what ever you like, and simply choose this image to create a puzzle from it. Set the difficulty level and you are ready to go ! In my perception this brings an additional funfactor into the application, while the process is very simple.

Gameplay and its highlights

Already described above there are three options to choose from when starting a new game. Two of these options are already described above, and this paragraph will focus on the gameplay using an imagepack. At the start with a new imagepack just the first image is available for puzzling, like in the screenshot above. However once you have solved the first puzzle, access to the next puzzle in the imagepack is granted. This approach can also be seen in Spb Brain Evolution, getting access to new games.

When you select the puzzle a preview is shown, and with pressing the right softkey “resume” the game is started. If you need to go back to the preview during the game, simply click the “back arrow” in the left corner below, and resume again after the preview. Some cool behavior in the gameplay:

“If two adjacent pieces face each other close enough and with the right sides – they will stick together and continue to behave like one. If piece is placed in its correct position, for example, in a corner – it will be fixed and will no longer move.” [ref02]

In addition when you put two pieces of the puzzle together, you get haptic feedback ( = short vibrate) on the moment you “click” the piece in the puzzle. Since this is hart to capture in a screenshot a short video is provided above.

If you have put the last piece right into the puzzle Spb Softwarehouse has included a nice “fading-feature”. The layer with puzzle-piece shapes is removed, and the original picture is shown.

“When a puzzle is solved successfully – an informative description of the assembled image will be provided, followed by the “congratulations” screen.” [ref02]

By providing some background information the Spb Puzzle game has also a learning / teaching aspect. Getting to know a little background on some pieces of art for instance. Spb Softwarehouse included a clever “auto-save function” if you close the game in a certain way, like described below.

“The game can be closed with the touch of the “End Call” button. This game will be automatically saved and will be opened at next launch at the same point.” [ref02]

Depending on the device and screensize, as well as the difficulty level of the puzzle, the size of the image exceeds the size of the screen. In other words it means that you just see a part of the image on the current screen, resulting in moving around the screen by using your finger or stylus. However you can also give the pieces a kind of swipe, which makes it easier to search among them.

“You can quickly move the necessary fragments through the whole field. This kind of jump can be performed in two ways:

1. Tap any field point, then quickly tap somewhere aside (at least a centimeter away) in the direction of the desired jump. If you do it right the screen will immediately move in that direction against the stop. If the first tap was done on a certain piece it will be quickly moved through the whole screen.
2. If the device has a joypad (hardware navigation buttons) you can carry out the same action: while holding a piece with your stylus, use the navigation buttons to move it to the appropriate edge of the field. ” [ref02]

First thoughts and some considerations

First I truly like the idea of transforming a classical “old” game into a digital game for use on mobile phones. I think almost everyone has solved a jigsaw puzzle, so it’s a very

“Puzzles are said to improve concentration, logic, attention, memory, and imagination.  Spb Puzzle lets you play the time-tested jigsaw classic on your phone – anytime and anyplace.” [ref02]

Second my compliments for the excellent designed gameplay. Because of the perception of a classical jigsaw puzzle is rather “simple” in concept, Spb Softwarehouse managed to develop an attractive and interactive game in a modern jacket.

Third the modular imagepack-concept is very welcome. The standard imagepack is about art, and if that doesn’t interest you it’s no fun in solving those puzzles. As stated in the overview above, several additional imagepacks will  be available for download, and hopefully the (Windows Mobile) developer community can add/or upload their own created imagepacks to Spb Softwarehouse.

Spb Softwarehouse developed a great gameplay in which touch (finger and stylus) are supported as well as the use of the hardware keys.

Als very cool that you can personalize the application and creat and solve your own puzzles. Simply take a picture of your girlfriend, car, pet or what ever you like and create a puzzle from it within Spb Puzzle. This brings an additional funfactor in this application.

Some considerations and remarks

“Typically, the size of images exceeds the size of the screen, so permanently a player can only see a part of the whole image.” [ref02]

This results in a lot of panning and moving the puzzle around. A screen on a mobile device isn’t as large as the kitchen table where you solved a 5000 pieces puzzle. Personally I find the relative small screen and resulting select and pan “actions” a little distractive. My view on this is that Spb Puzzle is shown advantage on large screen devices like the HTC Advantage, the HTC Touch or the Samsung Omnia.

Elaborating a little more in this direction, and adapting a part of the Microsoft three screen strategy, I would invite Spb Softwarehouse to develop a desktop version of the Spb Puzzle application. With touchscreens becoming more and more available for notebooks and desktops this might be a step to consider. Personally I use a Lenovo X60 tablet, and for instance the HP TX2  (= tablet) or the HP Touchsmart ( = all in one desktop) support finger-touch. The latter both I’ve played with @ CNTRSTG and we had great fun playing a simple game on the HP Touchsmart.

Remark that I wasn’t able to test Spb Puzzle on a Symbian S60 device with touchscreen. Simply because I don’t have such a device, but that raises an important  question:

“Why has Spb Softwarehouse  chosen for Symbian S60 as a second platform for Spb Puzzle, since there aren’t that many Symbian S60 devices on the market WITH a touch screen ?”

I’m only aware of one Nokia device that has a touchscreen: Nokia Xpressmusic 5800 and the Samsung Omnia HD also provides a large screen combined with the Symbian S60 platform. I don’t get the reasoning behind this, while there are large volumes in the iPhone market and Spb Softwarehouse already has experience with the launch of Spb Wallet for iPhone. Idea’s ?

Complementary Spb Puzzle review on Symbian S60

The review above just focusses on Spb Puzzle running on a Windows Mobile Professional device. Unfortunately I didn’t have a Symbian S60 device available. Matthew Miller from Nokia Experts has also written an excellent review about Spb Puzzle, but tested on the Nokia 5800.  His conclusions:

“Spb Puzzle is a fairly simple game, but like I said earlier I actually had quite a bit of fun putting puzzle back together on my 5800 XM. Spb stated they wanted to “Create the simplest interface possible, minimizing the number of unnecessary and distracting details.” I have to fully agree that they achieved this as I was able to jump right in and have fun assembling puzzles without any other menus, options, noises, etc. distracting me from the task at hand. While Spb Puzzle is quite enjoyable it is also a benefit that puzzles are said to improve concentration, logic, attention, memory, and imagination and we can all use some improvement in these areas..” [ref04]

The review is highly recommended and complementary to the review above, so head over to Nokia Experts !

Overall wrap-up

Spb Softwarehouse transformed a well known classical jigsaw puzzle into a modern game for mobile phones (running multiple platforms).  While this is version 1.0 of Spb Puzzle, the Russian developers did a great job with the haptic feedback, the realistic gameplay, and a very intuitive user interface. The custom puzzles give a high level of personalization, and the modular design with additional imagepacks and multi-platform approach make it a great application.

Available at the at the website of Spb Softwarehouse for a fair price of $9,95

Reference List:

1. WIKIPEDIA:  Jigsaw Puzzle
2. SPB SOFTWAREHOUSE:  Additional background information  about Spb Puzzle
3. SPB SOFTWAREHOUSE:  Spb Puzzle Product page
4. NOKIA EXPERTS:  Review: Solve jigsaw puzzles on your Nokia 5800 with Spb Puzzle