Multicross Review

Developer: WildSnake Software
Price: FREE
Version Reviewed: 1.0
App Reviewed on: iPhone 5

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Multicross is a vaguely familiar-ish looking puzzle game from Alexey Pajitnov, the mind behind Tetris. But don’t let the tetrominos fool you - while we’ve seen many of these shapes before, this is a very different kind of game.

You’re presented a 7X7 grid, with three shapes to place along the bottom of the screen. Once you drag and drop a shape into place, another one will appear in the line. Creating finished rows or columns will clear out those respective lines and earn you points, and if you ever run out of possible moves it’s Game Over. However, if you can manage to complete both a row and a column at the same time you’ll clear the board and earn even more points.

Okay, I know it kind of still sounds like Tetris but it really isn’t. Multicross is much more methodical and strategic. Shape placement is very important, and unlike Tetris you won’t get a preview of the next shape in the queue - you’ve only got your three available choices and that’s it. No planning ahead. It’s all about leaving yourself openings to create screen-clearing placements, and lasting for as long as you can.

Multicross isn’t as... let’s go with “bombastic” as its older cousin, though. There’s no music, sound effects are minimal, and the visuals are strictly utilitarian. Although you can change the color palette in the options menu, which is nice.

It’s a fair bit simpler than the much-loved classic, but I found myself losing more time than I’d expected to Multicross. Despite the somewhat barebones presentation the core puzzle elements are fairly interesting (almost reminiscent of tangrams) and once it “clicks” it can be difficult to stop chasing that high score.