Access

Beta Tester Review of the full-release game: The Abstract, Overall View: Access is one of those games that takes a good central set of game mechanics and hones them to a fine edge. Doing that is its central goal & achievement over anything else; If you think along the lines of Super Hexagon rather than Infinifactory or Portal 2, you'll know what I mean. All have excellent puzzling, but the former type is meant to be honed over time with leaderboards, whereas the other is more plot driven. Access is meant for short, sharp and repeated stabs during coffee breaks and cool evenings, honing your skills to meet the challenge the game presents. As with Julius Ceasar's kidneys, so with Access. The Core Gameplay: Super Puzzle Fighter is the clearest ancestor to Access, with others such as Tetris and (apparently unintentionally) Meteos bearing descent from a more remote distance. Access is not "another SPF clone" though, nor is it even a refinement of the same ruleset (think Serlin's XBLA remix). Instead, it takes the central concept of "block alignment on a 2D grid + explosion gems" and combines it with a drag-and-drop mechanic familiar from other puzzle games. Instead of rotating falli…

Definitely worth $5 for a fun, quick couch game. Some wonkiness with gamepad support that will hopefully be fixed at some point, but this game is fun and quick.

Access is right up my street! Like Super Hexagon it's the kind of game I can get addicted to. “Just one more game” I'll call to my husband, and hours later I've still not turned it off. It reminds me of Tetris and Columns, which I adore, but it's a unique game with different mechanics and a fresh spin on the tile matching genre. The music is also brilliant. It was with ridiculous pride that I once held the #1 spot on the high scores - I've never been at the top of any leaderboard so I was ecstatic - until a friend and colleague bumped me off. Lucky for him our friendship is intact but I remain determined to destroy him!