About This Game Featuring some truly fowl images indeed. Pixel Puzzles 2: Birds is a traditional style jigsaw puzzle game, with crabs scurrying around so WATCH YOUR FINGERS!!! The Pixel Puzzles series has been treated to a complete rebuild from the ground up, resulting in Pixel Puzzles 2 being a much smoother more refined gaming experience. So, what to do about those pesky crabs? Rather than giving them a squish, throw them in a cage. Collect and consume your little shelled friends to gain special puzzle solving abilities, with the crab grabbing power up system. Go catch them critters, they’re hiding under the pieces!Features:25 puzzles in a range of sizes from 60 to 350 pieces.Auto saving, never lose your progress.Relaxing atmosphere.Traditional puzzle gameplay.33 Steam Achievements.Puzzle piece rotation.Interactive play environment.Beautiful photos of birds, taken in the south atlantic.Power ups to help solve puzzles. 7aa9394dea Title: Pixel Puzzles 2: BirdsGenre: Casual, Indie, Simulation, StrategyDeveloper:DL SoftworksPublisher:DL SoftworksFranchise:Pixel PuzzlesRelease Date: 20 Feb, 2015 Pixel Puzzles 2: Birds Key Serial pixel puzzles 2 birds steam. pixel puzzles 2 birds. pixel puzzles 2 birds achievements Like the former version Pixel Puzzles : Japan, it is not really a bad game, but it has some flaws that make it a bad experience.Sum up of my review : + rotation + few more or less useful functionalities (zoom, tray, shuffle, switch backgroud color) + corrected issue with selecting pieces in Pixel Puzzle : Japan version - slow - crabs that appear and "dance" randomly over your pieces on the board - no sample of the finished image - no music (only bird sounds) - buttons in the pond that hide pieces - water in the ponds blurs and alters the color of the pieces +\/- only bird images (well, that's the theme of the game, so it's good if you like birds, bad if you like diversity...)First I'm going to review its good points (in comparison to Japan version) : There is a rotation feature, easily done (right click while holding the piece), the problem is that right click while not holding the piece sends it back in the pond. This is not a big problem, but it can be frustrating. Then, there are a bunch of new functionalities added, like shuffling the pieces in the pond (which helps you locating them sometimes), zooming on the board (never used it, but it exists), switch background color of the board, and a tray on the bottom of the screen to put pieces you don't want to loose. I also have to mention the problems for selecting pieces in Japan version are fixed in this one, which is great.Now, on to the bad points : First is the slowness (I don't know if it is my computer, but even when I'm not in HQ, I have some issues with slow moving pieces), of course the problem increases with the amount of pieces. That sometimes made me miss my clicks. Then, I have to mention the crabs : in the previous version, you would sometimes select crabs in the pond instead of pieces. Tha was a problem they fixed in this one : now you catch them to get "powers" : they will randomly appear ON THE BOARD and dance on the pieces. The idea is that you can catch them and throw them into a net on the side of the screen. When you have enough of them, you can use them to get some hints. Well, I don't really care about hints, but I care A LOT about the fact that damn crabs are dancing over the picture until I throw them out. And they will reappear 10 or 20 seconds later. By the way, you CAN'T remove them in the options, because you can't do much in the options anyway.Still no sample of what your puzzle would look like when finished (well, there is an image that fades quickly at the beginning, but after that, you're with your memory ...Unlike the previous opus, there is no music in this one, there are only some bird sounds in the background, so it feels a bit empty. At least the previous game was pretty relaxing, but this one is not.I mentioned the crabs that prevented you to pick your pieces in Japan version ? Well, there are buttons in the pond that do pretty much the same thing : these buttons are the ones that allow the new features, like zooming or changing background color, but they hide pieces behind them, and when you want to click on them, you often select the piece behind instead.I also mentioned a tray to put your spare pieces you don't want to loose, well there is also a flaw in that one : the tray appears at the bottom of the screen, and hides the top part of the pond (and obviously the pieces contained in it).And I kept the worst for the end : The pieces in the pond are not at the surface, they're IMMERSED in it. That means that the water blurs the details and even ALTERS THE ACTUAL COLOR OF THE PIECE ! If you want an orange piece for instance, you will have to search for a brown one.. The legendary Birdemic movie videogame tie-in! Now with real life gore!Backgrounds are dumb-noisy, and pieces are submerged, which igets pretty irritating, especially on big penguin pattern-like picture. Overall pictures and interfaces are still low-res. Also i can't find any music. There is only one interactive thingy, unlike in japan game. In the end it's the worst jigsaw game they made, but it still no more or less than it is. If you bought this one after checking out screenshots - well, you bough it.. This is the fourth Pixel Puzzles game I've played, and the only one so far that I would not recommend. I love puzzles, both physical and digital, and I finished every puzzle in this game, but there were so many built-in and unnecessary annoyances that I couldn't recommend it to anyone else.First and most importantly, someone had the idea to make the background patterned. I'm sure they meant well, but building a patterned puzzle on a patterned backdrop is extremely difficult, especially with the larger puzzles that have smaller pieces. With some, seeing the edges was nearly impossible, even with changing the color of the patterned backdrop. Without being able to make out the shape of the edges, adding pieces became a sort of "trial-and-error" of dropping every somewhat-matching piece into the spot and hoping one will fit. There is, as far as I could see, no way to get a nice solid background to work with, only color-changes of the pattern; this can help but doesn't solve the problem. To me, this is a game-ruining design flaw.The hint system isn't awful but it adds another layer of annoyance. The crabs you have to gather to "spend" on hints spawn directly under your cursor. If you're trying to work in an area, you have to drop the piece you're working on to move the damned crab out of the way. If by some chance the crab spawns where you have a few pieces piled up, you have to move every piece before you can grab the crab. If you have a LOT of pieces piled up (i.e. if you're sorting them), it can take forever to get everything moved so you can get the crab moved. Not game breaking, but very annoying.The other problem I had with it was purely aesthetic. Birds aren't the most interesting thing to me, but I was expecting bright birds with pretty plumage, tropical birds and pea\u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665, things that are pretty and make great puzzles. Instead, you get a lot of penguins, ducks, and raptors, and very few were bright and engaging. The end result for me personally was boredom. By the final, largest puzzle, I was sick of brown birds, brown ducks, and hundreds of penguins. So I opened the last puzzle to fiinish this game off, and there were more penguins (I shook my head with a sigh and sallied forth anyway). There was some variety in the pictures, but even the variety was dull. Now, this is a personal preference so others might not agree here, but it was my personal opinion on it.So after 20+ hours playing the game and finishing every puzzle for the sake of my own achievement-seeking OCD, I just can't recommend it to anyone else unless the poor background and annoying hint system aren't likely to bother you.. Like the former version Pixel Puzzles : Japan, it is not really a bad game, but it has some flaws that make it a bad experience.Sum up of my review : + rotation + few more or less useful functionalities (zoom, tray, shuffle, switch backgroud color) + corrected issue with selecting pieces in Pixel Puzzle : Japan version - slow - crabs that appear and "dance" randomly over your pieces on the board - no sample of the finished image - no music (only bird sounds) - buttons in the pond that hide pieces - water in the ponds blurs and alters the color of the pieces +\/- only bird images (well, that's the theme of the game, so it's good if you like birds, bad if you like diversity...)First I'm going to review its good points (in comparison to Japan version) : There is a rotation feature, easily done (right click while holding the piece), the problem is that right click while not holding the piece sends it back in the pond. This is not a big problem, but it can be frustrating. Then, there are a bunch of new functionalities added, like shuffling the pieces in the pond (which helps you locating them sometimes), zooming on the board (never used it, but it exists), switch background color of the board, and a tray on the bottom of the screen to put pieces you don't want to loose. I also have to mention the problems for selecting pieces in Japan version are fixed in this one, which is great.Now, on to the bad points : First is the slowness (I don't know if it is my computer, but even when I'm not in HQ, I have some issues with slow moving pieces), of course the problem increases with the amount of pieces. That sometimes made me miss my clicks. Then, I have to mention the crabs : in the previous version, you would sometimes select crabs in the pond instead of pieces. Tha was a problem they fixed in this one : now you catch them to get "powers" : they will randomly appear ON THE BOARD and dance on the pieces. The idea is that you can catch them and throw them into a net on the side of the screen. When you have enough of them, you can use them to get some hints. Well, I don't really care about hints, but I care A LOT about the fact that damn crabs are dancing over the picture until I throw them out. And they will reappear 10 or 20 seconds later. By the way, you CAN'T remove them in the options, because you can't do much in the options anyway.Still no sample of what your puzzle would look like when finished (well, there is an image that fades quickly at the beginning, but after that, you're with your memory ...Unlike the previous opus, there is no music in this one, there are only some bird sounds in the background, so it feels a bit empty. At least the previous game was pretty relaxing, but this one is not.I mentioned the crabs that prevented you to pick your pieces in Japan version ? Well, there are buttons in the pond that do pretty much the same thing : these buttons are the ones that allow the new features, like zooming or changing background color, but they hide pieces behind them, and when you want to click on them, you often select the piece behind instead.I also mentioned a tray to put your spare pieces you don't want to loose, well there is also a flaw in that one : the tray appears at the bottom of the screen, and hides the top part of the pond (and obviously the pieces contained in it).And I kept the worst for the end : The pieces in the pond are not at the surface, they're IMMERSED in it. That means that the water blurs the details and even ALTERS THE ACTUAL COLOR OF THE PIECE ! If you want an orange piece for instance, you will have to search for a brown one.. I am extremely disappointed in this version of pixel puzzles. I played Pixel Puzzles: Japan and thoroughly enjoyed it (outside of not being able to easily click the piece you wanted). Seems they fixed that with "Birds", but the background is so horrible I cannot see the pictures. In the pond area where the pieces are floating, there are 6 buttons floating around getting in your way of seeing the pieces plus one ginormous fishing net where you are supposed to drop crabs - that are annoying and run all over your puzzle building space. When you fill up the net, you are supposed to get an award, but they don't seem to work and the crabs have now completely obscured the puzzle pieces floating "below" the net. It is hard enough locating the pieces you need, because they are all mostly blue and they are "under" the water, altering their color slightly, so it is hard to pick the piece you want. There is an option to put a little staging bar at the bottom where you can store pieces, but that also has a craggly, rippled background (as does the building area) which really plays havoc with your eyes. Also, when you put that little staging area there, the pieces floating above the building area are hidden from view. You have to take that away to "find" them again. I tried to take a screenshot of what I am talking about, using the F12 key, but that too seems to be broken. I am so annoyed that I purchased this. It is not fun at all; It is not relaxing at all, and I do not want to play it at all. Boo - hiss devs. Took something great and made it something I'm sorry I purchased.. Harder than Japan, in the embrace of nature. And amazing crab helper dude. Super Indie Karts Elendia Ceus Fortress of Hell is out!!!: 1 frightening fortress, 4 different parties.https://store.steampowered.com/app/644870/Fortress_of_Hell/
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