Features

I loved doing tangrams as a kid especially when we students had the opportunity to play with them in class. It was more fun than solving math problems and working only with pencil and paper. With tangrams, your hands held the smooth wooden pieces while you tried to find the right place for them in a blank space on the board.

When a kids’ book club catalog showed tangrams for sale, I jumped in and order them for my kids. Instead of them getting into it, they added more clutter to the already messy game room. Doing tangrams at home instead of watching TV or playing games wasn’t as fun as doing them in class instead of worksheets.

Temple of Tangram provides tangram fans with the opportunity to have fun again without the clean up. Instead of touching and moving the pieces with your hands, the mouse does the work. Of course, there’s more to the game than just filling in the sillouettes. Computers have the power to do things we can’t do on a table.

For one thing, you’re on the clock as you work the puzzle. Unfortunately, you can’t turn off this option and the game doesn’t take long to up the level of difficulty. As you progress to the next level, the game play changes. In one level, the board disappears for a few seconds and reappears. In another, the pieces pop back out after so much time passes. The puzzle could continuously move up and down requiring players to work harder to get the pieces in place.

The tiles may need rotating to go where they belong. Turning the pieces takes a lot of mousework as the turning happens a little at a time. It would be easier if the turning would only take three or four clicks to do a full rotation instead of more.

You get a break from putting the puzzles together with the match three mini-game where you need to make the right matches to collect more tiles for the next Tangram puzzle. A level editor also becomes available after you complete 50 levels.

The canvas-style background and supporting landscapes add character to the game’s fitting Asian theme. Players can pick up bits of wisdom between levels. If the wisdom gets old or the music turns tedious, you can turn both off — I did. This is one of those games where some people will enjoy it and some won’t. The trial should be enough to help you decide whether or not to continue down the path to find wisdom, peace, and inner truth in finding the Temple of Tangram.

Download and try Temple of Tangram or buy the game.

System Requirements: Windows

• Windows 98/NT/ME/2000/XP
• 800MHz or faster processor
• 128MB RAM
• DirectX 7.0 or later
• Video card with at least 32MB RAM