Review: Orientile
Score:
78%
Every time I come across an app from Beautiful Mind Games in the Windows Store, I'm amazed how they can take a well known gaming mechanic, twist it just enough to be something new yet familiar, and produce a really good gaming title. While there is no single wow moment in their latest title Orientile, it continues a strong run of successful games.
Version Reviewed: 1.0.0.0
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The old style of game tweaked here is the game of 'squares', where you have a grid of squares and the two players take turns to draw a single vertical or horizontal line. If you make a 1x1 square, it's claimed as yours.
Beautiful Mind Games have already twisted this principle once, removing the 2 dimensional lock on joining dots to create triangles instead of squares (Triangula, reviewed here). What does Orientile do?
It asks you to create 2x1 rectangles, rather than 1x1 squares. That's the only real change to the game, everything else is as the classic pencil and paper gamer would expect. That means the learning curve to playing Orientile is incredibly shallow. What takes a little longer is understanding the tactics of this new game, what to look for, what to avoid, and how to set up long chains of rectangles so you can rush ahead and claim a significant portion of the board in one turn.
You still score points based on squares, so a completed rectangle might earn you two squares, one square, or potentially no squares at all. But every completed rectangle lets you draw one more line. Sometimes scoring nothing to finish the sides of a rectangle is the best move.
The whole experience is incredibly accessible. Yes, you need to learn new tactics, but that's always been the appeal of Beautiful Mind Games for me. They present you with a simple scenario, one step removed from your existing experiences, and help you adapt to a new challenge.
On top of all this, you have a cartoon-esque feel to the game's presentation. From the delightful name and background images, to the caricatured representations of each opponent's skill (innocence, knowledge, wisdom, and enlightenment), the sushi-filled trays representing the three physical sizes of board you can play on, and the gentle sound effects, someone has thought about how to present the game with a consistent tone of voice, and it's a lesson in how that single vision can really help lift a good idea towards a great game.
Perhaps there's not as much depth, strategically, in this title than others, but it's still a captivating experience that I've been coming back to frequently over the last week or so. Single games can be started and played very quickly, while it's possible to have a long gaming session and not feel like you are grinding.
You have an ongoing rank that goes up and down depending on how well you perform, and these are tracked for each skill level and board size you play. It's also compared to everyone playing Orientile, so you can see not only how you are personally improving but also how you are ranked with the rest of the world. It's not a huge part of the game, and you could happily play Orientile and never worry about the grading, but it does add a little bit of a long term goal.
Maybe a bit more prominence could make Orientile feel a little grander, because right now it feels like the game sits in the corner waiting for all of the features to be discovered, rather than being very brash and loud from the opening.
But that's the style I've come to love from these developers, so a thumbs up from me, and a recommendation that you give this a go.
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at