Fractal is a surprisingly enjoyable brain teaser, casual, puzzle like game where you make fractals of one color. A fractal is a diamond of 7 tiles / cubes / gems / whatever. 2 on the left, 2 on the right, 3 in the center. How do you arrange them? You simply click an empty space on the grid or the border of the level. When you click that empty space, the spaces around it push out with whatever color gem you have next in your cue. Let's say green gem in your cue you will push out in all directions shifting all the gems in all directions 1 space over. Like pushing lines in 6 directions. You only get a certain amount of 'pushes' per level. To beat a level you need to get X amount of points. When you make a fractal, other gems appear in the level, which may lead to a chain of fractals or mess you up. Sometimes you need to think 2 or 3 moves ahead and when different colored gems get involved you need to make sure one move doesn't mess up something else you've been planning.

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The campaign won't take more than a few hours, but I can see there being replay value in the way that Tetris is replayable. While the score isn't a big focus of the game, it still gets your brain going. There's no pressure or time limit, its soothing. The puzzle mode has several continuous puzzles.

Eventually the game throws different kinds of tiles your way. If those special tiles are in your fractals, you will get their bonuses. Things like adding more tiles to your cue, exploding all connected tiles of the same color, pushing tiles apart from the fractal and so on. It adds a needed level of depth.

Luckily there are two other modes, arcade and puzzle. Puzzle mode has you completing objectives such as making a triple fractal in X number of pushes or clearing all of the diamonds. It is a nice diversion, but hardly the meat of the game. The arcade is more of a time attack to get as many fractals in a limited amount of time. There are time tiles that will add to the clock when they're in a fractal.

Fractal feels like its more suited for relaxing with a touch screen and mobile devices rather than for people sitting in a chair at a computer. Its still an engaging and relaxing game for a while.

Fractal: Make Blooms not War (Nth Review)

This game has a few problems: The difficulty curve is rather wavy, going up and down through the levels. Some are ridiculously easy and some are not only pretty hard, but also depend on luck - because your starting field is randomized in campaign mode, you can get everything from a 60 points head start to an unsolvable mess.

The graphical presentation is nice, but doesn't go beyong functional, really. Same goes for the Sound.

The game modes are fairly diverse, though the campaign is rather "puzzle"-y, safe for the previoulsly mentioned randomness - which can be really annoying and warrents constant restarts. The puzzles are pretty good and serve as the only "sort-of" tutorial, because a really detailed introdution is missing. The arcade mode is boiled down to frantic clicking, which becomes a bit more strategic with practice.

All in all this is a nice puzzler, with some rather annoying problems. If you're looking for a small game to play in between other things to do, this fits the bill. But it is no game to sit back and relax, because it will annoy you from time to time.

Rating: Only just recommendable.

Very enjoyable. This game didn't last me long; I quickly reached a stage where it was just too hard to complete the levels. However, I really enjoyed it. The music is enjoyable, the graphics are very aesthetically pleasing, and the gameplay itself is simple to understand but fun to play.

I would be interested in seeing more from this developer.

I've owned Fractal since it was a standalone Flash game (it's since been redone in Unity) - I like the concept and I've played a fair-bit but there are some gotchas with the game as-a-whole which make it hard to recommend to others.

First-up, the game has power-ups which are not explained in any way. You're simply expected to guess what they do!? You shouldn't have to ask in the forums to find-out how a game works!?

The career mode seems designed to teach you how to play (once you figure out the power-ups) and it works upto a point, but by Level 23/24 it's descended into a horrible potluck mess of a thing. Level 24 is, imo, impossible 99% of the time - you need a very lucky layout to be able to clear it (23 isn't much better)

The game is also missing some basic features such as the ability to adjust music/sfx levels and any sort of online highscoring - this seems odd in an otherwise polished product when schoolboy designed games have this stuff?

It's all a bit disappointing really - I struggle to recommend it but I emphasise the the game at the core is a fine puzzle, it's just let down by a feeling of being half-baked and abandoned.

If you look through my library you’ll see that I’m a bit of a sucker for Cipher Primes magically atmospheric puzzle design. Splice single handedly made me realize that I don’t dislike puzzle games, I just can’t stand how bland and uninspired they have become.
It kind of saddens me to see fractal return to the mundane. The game is gorgeous, don’t get me wrong, but pushing around hexagons to make bigger hexagons and clear a board is not exactly a game changing mechanic. After only the first few levels of the “campaign” and a couple puzzle levels I was bored and back to my cynical opinions of puzzle games.
Cipher Prime is awesome and they have some great talent on their team but they gotta keep taking the risks; Fractal was a safe game and it shows in it’s stale gameplay.

Well, I own it because I enjoy all of Cipher Prime Studios other games and keep myself up to date on what they got going on... but do I enjoy it?

Nah.

It's a pretty alright game but it's just not the kind of puzzle game for me. I can respect the idea of it, as it's a little different to other puzzle games but for some reason this one just didn't strike me as fun. I always told myself to go back to it, try to complete the campaign so it can live in the puzzle category with all the other puzzle games i've completed that I'll probably never go back to.
I just can't bring myself to do it. Installing and opening this game is kind of a chore to me.

To the right people I think this game would probably be great. If you like a challenge, arn't easily deterred and have a stategic mind then you might enjoy it. For me, I like puzzle games but they have to be interesting enough to keep me pea-brain's attention.

It's nowhere near terrible, you could always give it a try.


TL;DR: Little boring won't lie.

A pleasant color matching game. It lacks a proper tutorial, but only takes about 5 minutes to get the hang of it. The puzzle mode is kind of a pseudo-tutorial and I would suggest starting there if you want to slowly get the hang of things. The music melody is nice, but the drum samples are poor quality. Like the majority of these type of games, it is great at passing the time, but I haven't seen anything that made me say "WOW."

This is a pretty neat little puzzle game. It's something like a cross between Othello and Bejeweled. It's got some pretty great background music. If you're looking for a casual puzzler, this is a pretty good one.

It seems i can't get enough of this game. Played much more than it's simple design should warrant for.

Annoying in the beginning as you can't quite get into the flow of making blooms. (fill up blobs of 7 to make a 'block' which make them dissapear). Also just when the game starts to feel stale they introduce bombs, lightning and suddenly you start getting chains.

Campaign game is nice as it introduces new elements slowly. For variance one can just try the arcade or puzzles too.

Great value for it's price really. Just be warned that it takes awhile for this game to start shining. early game is entirely different to bombing clusters and chain-electrocuting large areas of the map.

It's tough for me to review puzzle games as they usually fall into a few categories
-Too hard
-I'm terrible at it
-Not fun

Fractal comes off as a competent puzzle game at its core. There's no tutorial but you quickly figure out what the goal is. It's just not fun for me. I tried a few levels but just didn't like it.

There is a random factor to fractal. Which can be good for replay value but also bad because it's partially luck based.

Not sure why this game only runs at 30fps either.

I won't be giving this game a score. Even though I wouldn't recommend it, I don't consider it a bad game either.