If you have a few minutes to waste, and you're in the mood for something colourful and relaxing, look no further! Swap It Et 3 is a jigsaw puzzle game with a nice little spin on the original premise (no kidding, the puzzles are made up of gears which are, you know, spinning). Each of the thirty levels is made up of jumbled tiles, and it's up to you to click and swap them until you get a coherent picture. The pictures invariably show multi-coloured gears of all shapes and sizes, moving at different rhythms.
The tricky part is that the tiles don't always display the right size of the gears. Bigger tiles act as magnifying glasses and try to confuse you with their wily ways, making it more difficult to see where to put them. To get the coveted three stars, all you have to do is make as few moves as possible, which kicks the challenge up a notch. Instead of swapping tiles with the swiftness of a speed demon, you get to plan your moves calmly and carefully. Not that the game is difficult either way – you can get the best results on most levels without a problem, but that's not really what Swap It Et 3 is about, anyway. What it wants to do is let you kick back and enjoy some colourful, almost plushy gears and a bunch of well-made puzzles.
Complaint: It is mathematically impossible to achieve a perfect score (3 stars) on levels 13, 19, 20, 21, 25, 26, 27, 28 and 29. Suppose tile A must go to tile B, tile B must go to tile C, and so forth until something must go to tile A. If there are N tiles to be revolved, it takes a minimum of N-1 swaps. By this math, the aforementioned levels require 6, 6, 6, 6, 8, 9, 9, 7 and 7 swaps respectively. I have solved the levels with those swap counts and achieved only 2 stars. So unless someone can make a walkthrough with fewer swaps on those levels to achieve 3 stars or the game devs edit the swap requirements to mathematically possible numbers, 1/5 rating for the game
Justin:
Actually, if there are two tiles that are themselves switched, the lowest number of possible swaps can be less than N-1. For example, if A and B are switched, and C and D are switched, the total number of swaps can be 2 instead of 3 (4-1).
Graderade: My logic still holds. That would be A->B->A (N=2, 1 swap) and C->D->C (N=2, 1 swap) for a total of 2 swaps. However, if it were A->B->C->D->A, THEN it would be 3 swaps.
I rated the game high because, for me, it was unique and engaging. However, I could not get perfect scores on several levels no matter how I moved, and Justin E. explained why that is..
...but that's not really what Swap It Et 3 is about, anyway. What it wants to do is let you kick back and enjoy some colourful, almost plushy gears and a bunch of well-made puzzles.
While it might not be possible to achieve perfect score, game still deserves four stars imo. Puzzles are nice and well drawn and the gallery is almost hypnotic�didn't think i'd enjoy it so much while I was still playing.
Does anyone know why the game window isn't showing up in Firefox? It's loading in IE. I've disabled adblocker but it didn't affect it.
Regarding the Justin's question, we will invite the developer for answering by himself.
@Dandy, I had no problems with Firefox.
Frankly I don't know why the 'scoring' is even in the game. It's easy to get a perfect score so long as every swap puts a piece in the right slot (excepting the comment above, since I was also a little jarred to get two stars when I was solving levels in the fewest moves possible).
This was easy, but it was relaxing and fun. I would have liked more variety in the levels, such as unusual looking gears or other mechanisms to keep the game visually fresh, but it was short enough that it didn't bother me. This was a fine distraction.
I was a programmer this game.
I can confirm that - in some levels impossible take the three stars. It is our fault as developers.
Sorry guys .Think of it as a hidden Easter eggs.
Easter eggs? That's lame. Why set up a scoring system where a perfect score is unattainable? I actually quit the game yesterday due to only being able to get 2 stars in a level and deciding it wasn't worth my time to continue.
As others have noted, it's extremely easy to figure out the minimum number of steps to solve a level, but more crucially it's easy to do this even without planning ahead, since any solution which always puts at least one gear in the right place is guaranteed to be minimal. I'm not bothered by the wrongness of the formulae the developers used here, but rather that they felt it necessary to have a star rating in the first place.
I think too many games do this, where a star system breaks you out of the moment. You stop enjoying the game for what it is, and start worrying that you're missing content by not optimally playing through what should otherwise be a relaxing experience.
The game won't load in Firefox. I get "Error #2032".
Also, unattainable goals is an Easter egg. Please don't insult our intelligence by trying to pass a bug off as a feature. That's really slimy of you.
Guys calm down!
Liu Wong,said Easter Egg as a humorous apology of a bug or slightly unfinished game.
In my opinion they had a good concept and implemented it well indeed :)
I am sure they are not trying to insult your intelligence sts ... cut them some slack for having the balls to even do this in the first place.
@sys... when you have a bug free free flash game that has any playability what so ever feel free to comment again
C'mon children, just because you're anonymous, doesn't mean you have to be rude or react OTT to everything.
Liu Wong had the good grace to come on here, confirm the existence of the bug, take responsibility for it, and apologise for it (that's the "Sorry guys" bit). He then tried to end on a lighter note by suggesting that the bug be considered as a feature because no developer has ever done that before (Apple and Microsoft, I'm looking at you).
Flaming him for it is churlish and unnecessary (I believe that the formula flame = f'g lame prob applies here).
And rating a game 1/5 for a small mistake in an incidental component is just mean. If you're that achievement-oriented, there are plenty of other games.
Well, I invited Liu Wong to explain this matter of fact and he came. In the future we would like to develop the relationships between developers/studios and players but of course it's important to keep a good attitude especially when the developer does not speak english. Remember all the games are free to play so even if there are little bugs, you did not spend anything. Good to tell that I think.
Cheers.
I wish this game did involve careful planning. Planning implies thinking a move or two ahead of the current one: to avoid a dead end, for example, or set up a cascade. None of that here.
I have to say, I love the music in this game. I can't quite bring myself to close out of it even now that I've finished it.
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