Puzzle Oku review: money problems done right

Puzzle Oku, commonly referred to in Japan as Pazu Oku (パズ億), is a puzzle game that will have you traveling the globe in hopes to collect millions of dollars by matching currencies. Mobage’s new match 3 puzzle game for iOS and Android devices may seem easy at first, but it quickly becomes one of the most challenging games I’ve ever played.

Puzzle who?

Puzzle Oku is a match 3 puzzle game that displays a board and four currencies to work with. These include the Yen, the Yuan, the Dollar, and the Euro all in the shape of coins. When you make a match, the coins disappear, and new coins fall into to the board’s slot.

Playing the game is simple. You drag your finger along as many consecutive coins as you can in an attempt to reach a certain score within either a time or turn limit. If you connect three coins, they all disappear from the board and the coins from above fill their slot. Connecting four coins will get you a power up that destroys all coins in the direction you were swiping. Collecting ten will get you a historical figure that will wipe away all the coins of its currency.

That’s the easy part. What makes Puzzle Oku so challenging is that as you progress to more challenging levels, the game forces you to use every slot on the board before you can clear the stage.

When you enter into a new stage, all of the slots will be blue. Once you’ve used a currency on that slot to make a match, the slot will turn yellow. The stage will only be clear if you reach your goal in points, and all of the slots are yellow. This will prove to be infuriating at points, but who doesn’t like a challenge?

The difference is puzzling

What makes Puzzle Oku stand out in an already oversaturated genre is that the game actually is a puzzle game. This is not just make as many matches as possible within a certain time limit. This is a game that creates some truly challenging puzzles by making you think about your actions before you move.

The game’s powerups, that you receive for making matches of four or ten, can either be the key to solving the puzzle, or your demise. When you make a match, the last coin then turns into a power up to be used later in the game. The problem is, if not properly planned for, these power ups can get in the way potential matches, thus causing you to fail.

A combination of forcing the players to use all of the slots, think twice about making power ups, and just all around difficult puzzles makes Puzzle Oku stand out as one challenging puzzle game.

Animation and sound