Four Corners

Four Corners added an intensity and immediacy to the puzzle games from Scenic Route Week that was missing in the slower, thinky puzzlers. This game has a time limit, and it is SHORT. Like the others I’ve played this week, I totally did not understand it at first, even with the tutorial. But once I got it, dang. I think I forgot to breathe, I was so enraptured.

The trick to this game is right there in the name: Four Corners. You are presented with a random grid of black, white, and gray tiles, and your job is to make a big box with four corners that share a matching color. Hit A to lay down a point to tether one corner of your box, and start expanding. Find three other corners of the same color in a square or rectangle shape, and you’ll eat up every tile in the box. That means if all four corners of the playfield are gray? You can make a giant box that consumes the whole screen. It even gives you a bonus bomb for doing that, which will eliminate every tile of a certain color from the screen. You’ll need to eat up a certain number of tiles to get to the next level, and that number is represented visually in the lower right side of the screen. Each level is a little bigger, but your time limit is the same.

You get 60 seconds per level on easy, 45 per level on medium, and 30 on hard. Finding corners that match, the farther away you get from your first tethered corner, gets even harder when the timer is counting down aloud, with a human man’s voice. Felt like I was playing Unreal Tournament or something, the way he reacted when I got a big ol’ square (he didn’t say “wicked sick,” but it felt just as cool). I love spoken commentary complimenting my successes, I guess! Nice to know I’m doing a good job.

There are global leaderboards for each difficulty level, too, which you’re even able to see in-game instead of only on the Catalog website, which is cool. There are a lot of puzzle games on the Playdate, but the frenetic pace of this one really helps it stand out. Looks like I’m discovering things about myself this week! Slow, methodical puzzle games have their time and place, but my favorites are the ones that hit back.

(Released December 13, 2022, on Itch and September 5, 2023, on Catalog. Copy provided by developer.)