Cogs on Steam

Upcoming steampunk game re-imagines the sliding tile puzzle.

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By Nathan Davis on 3 April, 2009

Cogs: Screenshots just don't do it justice.I’m a huge fan of mechanical puzzles. Not a whole lot else forces your brain to analyse so much as having to think well ahead of time, often at multiple levels, while assembling or disassembling in order to solve the puzzle. Kind of like chess, in a way, only with physics as the acting and definitive rulebook.

As a result, it excites me to see an independent developer re-imagining the sliding tile puzzle on the PC in a very cool, steampunk fashion. Now, admittedly, it’s a slightly more ‘casual’ type of game than I’d ordinarily cover, but it looks remarkably swish, so ordinary be damned.

Due out on very soon on Steam, it’s called Cogs and developer Lazy 8 Studios makes full use of its custom 3D game engine. Puzzle boards are no longer limited to boring, flat squares, and are now found on all manner of objects. Instead of forming a picture, you must instead solve a challenge using various gears, copper pipes, bells, balloons – you name it – all of which are connected to the tiles. These challenges are often related to what the puzzle is attached to, such as a vehicle that needs all three propellers turning or opening a jack-in-the-box. Or even playing a damn tune.

Wonderfully enough, the game will support the creation of your very own puzzles, albeit by writing snippets of what essentially amounts to code. “Puzzles are just a text file, the format of which a keen modder can likely figure out after a quick scan of an example,” explains Brendan Mauro, the lead artist for Cogs. “… but we’ll be posting tutorials once the game is out to make sure anyone interested can follow along.”

Come the 14th of April, Cogs will launch on Steam for a piddly US$10. It’ll feature three modes of gameplay with fifty different levels and that’ll no doubt rapidly expand, if only thanks to community creations. Better yet, you’ll even get to try out a free demo before purchasing. Meanwhile, the recent trailer and an earlier sneak peak should whet your appetite.

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