With Split Party!, you just have to ruin all the fun. See, your goal for each level is to separate different colored boxes so that each one switches from a smiley face to a frowny face. It’s like these blocks are your teenage kids and their punky, disrespectful friends, and you just came home from a long day at the blocks factory to discover your liquor cabinet wide open and emptied. Time to put your foot down, undo your belt menacingly, and get everyone to clear out. Well, that’s how I read it, but let’s see how its maker Ishisoft describes it:
A short puzzle game. Rotate the blocks to split them up from their friends, we don’t want them partying too hard!
I played up to the tenth level and got stuck. Not sure if there are ten levels in total, as there seemed to be more room available on the select screen, but nine successfully completed levels and a tough tenth one still encompassed a good time. The graphics are simple, but likable, though one caveat was that the ultra pink-purple background never changed with each level. A missed opportunity, for sure. And it’s amazing how effective a happy block to a sad block is. Music’s good and the puzzle mechanics of rotating, while initially confusing, quickly become secondhand nature. Early on, it was hard to wrap my mind around how to rotate the blocks to precisely cut them up and/or move them elsewhere within the level.
A great little gem of a puzzle game made in under 48 hours. Do give it a look, I say. And put back any liquor you took.
Grinding Down 