Strange Jigsaws’* *description is simple: It’s a game of strange jigsaws where you solve strange jigsaws. I started playing it recently after seeing some posts about it on social media. Created by 20 Small Mazes puzzle master FLEB, Strange Jigsaws has about 50 or so puzzles—not necessarily all jigsaw puzzles, but using jigsaw pieces. It opens right into the chaos: “Solve jigsaws. Find the golden pieces. Open the door.”
Des…
Strange Jigsaws’* *description is simple: It’s a game of strange jigsaws where you solve strange jigsaws. I started playing it recently after seeing some posts about it on social media. Created by 20 Small Mazes puzzle master FLEB, Strange Jigsaws has about 50 or so puzzles—not necessarily all jigsaw puzzles, but using jigsaw pieces. It opens right into the chaos: “Solve jigsaws. Find the golden pieces. Open the door.”
Designer FLEB opens Strange Jigsaw with a chaotic mess of multiple jigsaw puzzles, signaling that this game is more than just a puzzle simulator. Pieces are everywhere, and it’s prudent just to start moving pieces around to test out what they do. Among the first few puzzles, I’m to put pieces together to power a magnet and a computer, respectively, which opens up Strange Jigsaws puzzles even further. Then, trouble! A puzzle is on fire, and Tetris-shaped blocks of water are the only thing that can put them out. On the newly-powered computer, more puzzles: A clever captcha-inspired puzzle game, then a burger-building logic puzzle that reminded me of Is This Seat Taken?* *
There are jigsaws that are highly meta, using pathways controlled by Strange Jigsaws’ menu systems. There are darling puzzles illustrated by the designer’s seven-year-old daughter, puzzles with missing pieces that must be recolored using a paint fill tool, puzzles that need a screwdriver to solve. Strange Jigsaws is expertly designed, but what makes it truly fantastic is the earnest playfulness of it all: FLEB loves puzzles, and that’s obvious. He writes in Strange Jigsaws’ Steam description that this game is harder than his last, 20 Small Puzzles, and that may be true—but the puzzles here don’t feel cruelly hard. Some are hard, but designed in a way to make them feel doable and intentional. I might not understand a puzzle now, but the game reassures me that I will be able to, later.
There are so many moments in Strange Jigsaws that I want to talk to you about, but unfortunately for me, the person writing about this game, talking about them will sully the experience for you. Strange Jigsaws is just $5, so I urge you simply to try it out yourself. But if you need a taste of what designer FLEB is out, 20 Small Mazes is free.
Or, you can look to YouTube: The designer FLEB has a YouTube channel in which he talks about his games and others. It’s just as delightful as his games. His recent videos include a retrospective on 20 Small Mazes and a newly designed puzzle called Touching Grass, which is, naturally built out of grass. Over the past 10 years—with a seven year break somewhere in there—FLEB has made videos about all sorts of different puzzles. If this doesn’t convince you that FLEB knows puzzles, I don’t know what will.
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