Nintendo Okie

The Nintendo eShop has been pumping out the perfect “fix” to keep me hooked on puzzle games week after week. The latest addition to that list of addictive puzzlers is Art of Balance TOUCH!by Shin’en Multimedia.

What You Need to Know

Art of Balance TOUCH! is a puzzle game that requires the player to balance a large variety of shapes on top of each other and hold the tower you’ve created together for a mere three seconds. Sounds simple right? Just wait til you play it! You have the choice of using the touch screen or the circle pad to place your pieces on the screen and the L or R triggers to rotate your pieces as you see fit. You will have a set number of pieces that you have to use for each puzzle and some puzzles will give you a height requirement for your tower or a time limit in which you must complete the puzzle.

So Much Content!

Art of Balance TOUCH! started it’s life out as a WiiWare title back in 2010. The WiiWare release, Art of Balance, had 100 levels spanning 4 worlds where as Art of Balance TOUCH! has 200 levels across a total of 8 worlds! There’s also an endurance mode where you have to see how many puzzles you can complete in succession without failing 3 times, when you fail you get a score and can either play again to beat your own score or pass it to a friend and compete to see who’s the best. Finally, the game has an achievement type system where you have 13 objectives to complete where you unlock an “award” for each. It’s more there for one upping a friend than for anything in the me but it’s still a nice feature.

Just One More Puzzle!

I found myself saying that a lot while I was playing through this game.Art of Balance Touch! is SUPER addictive! I don’t know if it’s the catchy music, the unique gameplay, or just the fun of completing another puzzle but there were plenty of times I just couldn’t put it down. This is definitely a game that will eat your time!

I WAS Touching!

Probably the only complaint I have about the game is that the taller your tower gets, the looser your touch controls seem. To stack your piece on the top of an already tall tower, you have to scroll the camera view to the top. In order to do this you have to grab a piece and move it up there by sliding the stylus to the top of the touch screen as the camera pans up to where you want it. The problem comes in while the camera pans, if you’re not holding enough pressure on the top edge of the touch screen, the game thinks you intended to drop a piece when you meant to still be holding it. I failed quite a few levels due to this!

Shin’en Makes ‘Em Shine!

You can tell from the first level that there was a lot of love and polish put into Art of Balance TOUCH!. From the beautiful 3D graphics to the soothing background noises you hear when a piece falls into the water, this game really shows that Shin’en Multimedia cares a lot about the product they put out!

Conclusion

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I love puzzle games! I had a lot of fun playing Art of Balance TOUCH! and I expect many more hours in it! This was the perfect game to spend my 15 minute breaks at work on and even a perfect game to spend hours on in endurance mode! Art of Balance TOUCH! can be purchased from the Nintendo eShop for $6.99 and I would highly recommend doing so!

Final Score: 

Total play time: 5 hours
Review copy provided by Shin’en Multimedia