simian.interface++ Is A Better Game Than It Is A Name

Here's a little morsel for you: an abstract puzzle game that'll not trouble you for more than an hour. Or for infinity! simian.interface++ [official site], as it felt the need to be called, reminds me very much of Neko Games' lovely Hoshi Saga series, but a touch flashier. You need to, with experimental mouse movement, manipulate the patterns on screen until, well, you've done a thing.

This is most often about finding a way to resolve the pattern to a single white square, but not often enough that you can assume it. Pleasingly bold, sharp patterns and shapes are manipulated by mouse movement, which you need to meddle with to get the measure of things, and then attempt to manage and mould into something more cohesive. I think that's a good way of describing it.

The main game is a strange confusion of command prompt text cutscenes and cate memes, but can be largely ignored between the levels. And once you've gone through them all, there's what it calls Infinite Loop mode, which as far as I can tell isn't infinite but is actually infinitely generating puzzles!

The simple-yet-clever game's flaw, sadly, is an insistence on declaring, "FOCUS LOST" every time your (invisible) mouse cursor gets near to an extreme. That might sound like a useful system, but it's ridiculously over-sensitive and distracting, when just seeing that things aren't moving any more would be an equally clear indication. Gosh, it's bothersome.

Brush that aside, however, and you've a pleasing distraction here for the widdly sum of £1.20.