Vizati review

There’s almost a standard rulebook for what a modern indie game should have: lush, hand-painted backgrounds; a beautifully ethereal original score and a vaguely otherworldly plot. Vizati has all three. We were particularly surprised by the plot, as this is a pure puzzle game.

Vizati is played in a square of grey stone blocks. Inside the square are a handful of jewelled stones, which you have to join in groups of three or more to make them disappear. The objective is to clear the square of jewels within a set number of moves. Using the keyboard, mouse or an Xbox controller, you can tilt, rotate or flip the square to make the jewels inside it move accordingly. Tilting simply nudges your blocks left or right, while rotating and flipping the square sends all the blocks tumbling to what is now the bottom of the square.

There are two gameplay modes. The first requires you to solve a sequence of 50 puzzles, which become increasingly fiendish as you get past the halfway mark. It’s here that the entirely peripheral plot comes in, as a young woman marvels at the stone cube that hovers and rotates in the sky above her. Arcade mode is a faster-moving game where jewelled blocks keep appearing and you simply have to eliminate a certain number of a specified colour before the square fills up entirely.

Vizati probably isn’t a game that anyone will be glued to for hours at a time, but it’s an ideal casual game – an engaging diversion that, as you progress to the higher levels, becomes difficult enough to produce a real sense of satisfaction when you finally clear a puzzle. It’s well worth its low asking price and the arcade mode is enough to keep you playing for a little longer even after you’ve completed all 50 standard levels.