If I had kids (I don’t) and was a fan of homeschooling (I’m not), their education would consist primarily of playing video games.
The franchise mode of Madden for basic math, god games for science and assuming various MMORPG persona for sociology (i.e. infiltrate a group of griefers and see how long you can retain their confidence, while using that information to prevent attacks through persuasion or sabotage).
In that world, Slice It! would be an ideal geometry test.
In the real world, where students are test drones and video games the evil ruining those precious demonspawn, Slice It! is a fun little puzzler for the nerd crowd. Having been one my whole life, that’s not a value judgement). The 99-cent app features 60 levels where shapes must be sliced into areas of equal size using a specified number of cuts. Slicing a square in quarters or a triangle in half is easy enough in the early levels, but the challenge ramps up pretty quickly.
The slices are made by dragging lines across the shape (they must go all the way through, no partial cuts). You can undo them and a grid in the background offers assistance at estimating area. The cuts don’t have to be exact – coming close enough will earn a rating from one to five stars on precision. Skillful players are rewarded with hints they can redeem on subsequent levels.
Graphics, sound and music are first-rate whimsical, like something you’d see at The Children’s Television Workshop in the old days. The interface is nearly seamless, but there seemed to be a bit of lag on the options screen, so I briefly ended up viewing things in Japanese after paging through the available languages. The app benefits from not having much competition. The only thing I found remotely similar in a modestly thorough App Store search is Eye Challenge by 10 and 2 Studios, a 99-cent app that is more far more complex and instructional, but considerably less fun.
I used to solve puzzles similar to Slice It! from books using a pencil and paper as a kid, and I had the same simple fun with this – along with the sense most of my peers would mock me for not spending my gaming hours on cooler stuff. It’s not something likely to appeal to a wide general audience, but those who are interested will find Slice It! delivers very nicely.
By Mark Sabbatini
Slice It! by Com2us USA Inc.
$0.99
Platform Reviewed: iPhone/iPod/iPad (Requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later)
Category: Puzzle
Languages Supported: English, German, Japanese
Rating: 4+
