TUAW's Daily App: John Enock's Quaso
We've been spotlighting a lot of quick and easy action games in our Daily App feature lately, so here's something a little more cerebral. Quaso is a new kind of Crossword-style puzzle game, except that instead of guessing words, you're trying to figure out numbers in math equations. The game was created by an English mathematics teacher named John Enock, and has been brought to the iPhone by a developer as John Enock's Quaso, now available on the App Store for free.Here's how it works. For every crossword line on the board, you're given a set of math equations with the numbers missing. There's one total number for every puzzle (say, 6), and then for each equation, you need to figure out how another set of numbers fits in to complete the clue and make the equation equal to the total number. In other words, given the clue (*+*) x (*-*), and the answer of 6, you'd eventually work out that the numbers should be (1+2) x (5-3), and then put 1, 2, 5, and 3 in each spot on the answer. But that answer line has to match up to any that it intersects with, so you may need to switch the numbers around -- (2+1) instead of (1+2) -- for it all to work.
It's fiendishly clever, and it really puts your brain to work, especially if (like me) you're not that great at casual math. But there are a ton of puzzles to work through, and then you can even buy a puzzle pack via in-app purchase for more. Especially at the current price of free, Quaso is a mathematical brain teaser that you shouldn't miss.
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We've been spotlighting a lot of quick and easy action games in our Daily App feature lately, so here's something a little more cerebral....
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Just to let anyone reading this review know - an update of Quaso (version 1.02) is now available. The new version incorporates some of the really helpful early feedback we've had from users and reviewers and makes the game more fun and easier-to-learn (with better highlighting and tips on why a solution is incorrect). We've also improved the help on how-to-play and made it easier to buy the extra puzzles.
May 21 2010 at 7:51 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyHi, I lead the development team at Adduce Studios, the developers of John Enock's Quaso for iPhone.
Firstly, thanks to TUAW for featuring Quaso - as a long-time reader I know how significant that is and I'm honoured. We're really happy that more people are now trying Quaso.
Secondly, I'd like to reassure you that the price of the puzzles hasn't changed since we launched Quaso. There are some screenshots from a pre-release version still floating around the web that show 3 packs of 30 puzzles at €0.59 ($0.99) each, so I'm very sorry for that and I'm trying to replace them all.
We decided when releasing Quaso to change to 1 pack of 90 puzzles as we figured people would either love it and want to pay once to play the rest of the puzzles some day, or find it just wasn't for them after trying the first 10 puzzles.
Since we intend to keep adding more puzzles, we'd welcome any feedback on how to bundle puzzles - how many would you like to buy at once and what's a fair price?
Thirdly, as Johnny_eh points out, you can play the same 10 puzzles for free in the app or on the Quaso website. You can also see sample solutions for those puzzles if you need a hint.
And finally, apologies for using this as an impromptu customer support forum - we'd love to get feedback on Quaso, and you can go to http://getsatisfaction.com/adducestudios/products/adducestudios_john_enock_s_quaso to post it.
This app is not free. The initial download is free, but it only contains 10 puzzles (also on the quaso.co.uk homepage). For the rest of the puzzles, you have to buy $3 puzzle packs. I saw some screenshots around the web where it's $0.99. I guess the publicity you gave it made them raise the price :(
May 06 2010 at 5:23 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyWow, I feel really dorky, but I'm definitely downloading this.
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TUAW (or The Unofficial Apple Weblog) is a website devoted to tips, reviews, news, analysis and opinion on everything Apple.
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