Shuzzle Brings Shadowy Twist To Puzzle Games

Lewey Geselowitz writes "A lot of games nowadays have stencil shadows, but they are very rarely there for any reason other than just to look cool. So I wrote Shuzzle, a 3D block puzzle game for Windows where you can't see the objects, only their shadows. This forces the player to conceptually imagine the board and pieces, because they are not given the normal 'crutch' of being able to see them, only their projection from the light. It adds a whole new dimension to the standard 'soma' game and promotes a new form of thought which you cannot find in the physical world. I believe this uses more of the potential of shadows, and I'm looking forward to how they are used in the future, bringing new forms of gameplay, not just pretty pictures. [These are from the same developer who created Quake 2 AbSIRD (a Quake 2 Magic-Eye mod) and Freed Go (Go on a Mobius strip), both previously featured on Slashdot Games.]"

Comments

Why?

[mwvdlee]

How are these games "freed from constraints" when only new constraints are introduced? Now if you had tetris with true physics in 3D and sub-"square" movement, that might be "freeing from constraints" :)
I wonder how much fun these games actually are (can't test here) but I doubt they're anything better than a 2-minute novelty.