mocaiz

Frozen Mosaic - a sliding tile puzzle built on a three by three grid. A themed ice fishing picture is cut into nine pieces, eight of them sit on the board and one cell stays empty as an ice hole. A tap on a piece that stands next to the empty cell slides that piece into the hole, and the pieces trade places one step at a time until the picture is whole again. Every slide adds one to the move counter shown above the board, and the counter beside it holds the best result kept from earlier rounds. A tap on a piece that shares no edge with the empty cell does nothing and the board answers with a short shake, so a round comes down to planning the order of slides rather than tapping at speed. There is no timer and no way to fail a round: the board can always be brought back to the finished picture, and the only measure is how many slides it took. The round ends when all eight pieces stand in their own places, the completed picture is shown with a light sparkle over the board, and a panel with restart and menu opens above it. The result of the round goes into the list of best results, which holds up to eight rows, the smallest number of slides on top and the rest below it in order, each row carrying a position and a number. The starting layout comes from a shuffle applied to the finished picture, so every round begins from an arrangement that can be brought back. Settings hold three items: the best result with a button that clears the whole list, a three step difficulty switch that sets how deep the shuffle goes and takes effect on the next round, and a switch for the board effects, the shake on an impossible tap and the sparkle at the end. All of it, the list of best results, the difficulty step and the state of the effects switch, is kept between launches. The menu also holds a rules panel describing the sliding, the move counter and the end of a round, and every panel opens over the menu background and closes back to it.