Loopz

Loopz was published for DOS in 1990 by the British label Audiogenic, and it is one of the rare cases where bare geometry yields a puzzle game with a character of its own. The idea began a year earlier on the Atari ST and spread from there to practically every machine then on sale.

The principle sits somewhere between Tetris and Pipe Dream. You drop tiles made of lines onto a grid: a straight run, an elbow, or longer combinations of several such squares at once. You may rotate a piece into one of four orientations before placing it, but beyond that you take what you are given. The aim is to assemble a closed loop, a circuit of line that returns into itself. When one completes, every square forming it disappears and space opens up again.

All the tension comes from the fact that a big loop is worth far more than a small one, and is far more fragile. Four elbows arranged into a little square always work and pay almost nothing. A circuit sprawling across half the board is a bet that the piece you need to close it will turn up. When it does not, your unfinished work squats on valuable squares, the grid silts up and room to manoeuvre vanishes. The final turns become salvage work, which is exactly the squeeze that makes puzzle games compelling.

Loopz offers several modes, differing mainly in how hard the clock presses on you. It looks austere, which here is a virtue — you need to see at a glance where a line runs and where it has a free end. The music is catchier than such a spare game has any right to.

Monotony remains the weakness, since there is no reward beyond the mathematical kind. As a pure logic game, though, it still holds up. It runs directly in the browser on oldgame.cz.