Cogs Review

BY Nicholas Rego | POSTED: 18 May 2009

Get your grey cells turning.



Along with the Rubix Cube, another toy that I used to love as a child was those small grid-like sliding puzzles that you could never seem to get tired of. I used to have one that was a model of Hans Solo frozen in carbonite, and I would spend many hours gleefully sliding around his body parts until his terrified corpse was completed. Though these puzzles may have provided a brief stint of fun, they would soon loose their charm due to that fact that you were only limited to sliding around one picture. Well, if you crave those tile-snapping days of yesteryear, say no more – Cogs for the PC is the right medicine for you.



Cogs is the result of the two man team that is Lazy 8 Studios, and puts a wild spin on the classic tile-sliding puzzle. In Cogs, players slide around tiles not to re-create a picture, but to spin gears, turn cranks, chime bells, inflate balloons, and do all sorts of things, thanks to the kinetic power steam blasts and turning cogs. If you’ve got an evil fetish for things that turn, whirr, and click to kingdom come, then this is the game for you. Cogs lacks any sort of storyline whatsoever, so you jump straight into the puzzles which thankfully start off extremely easy. Simply click on a tile to slide it to an adjacent free space, or click a row to move all the tiles at once, thus reducing the number of moves required. The game judges you on how many moves you make to complete a puzzle, as well as the total time required to finish the level, thus earning you either a bronze, silver, or gold star. Levels are unlocked based on the number of stars your possess, so even if you spend 15 minutes finally solving a level, you won’t get to go onto the next one unless you’ve accumulated enough stars.

While the gameplay is initially kept very straightforward, it soon shoots up in difficulty once the 3D levels begin. Though you initially start the game with the puzzle based on a flat surface, you’re soon given double-sided puzzles with interlocking pieces, musical boxes, and even rockets around which to solve your gear-snapping puzzle. While the 3D levels are executed beautifully and make for some very interesting gameplay, the later levels really begin to try your patience, as you frustratingly move once piece around only to have some other part of the puzzle fall apart. The game’s difficulty is calculated almost cruelly, as I was able to progress past at least ten levels without a problem, only to be trumped at the next one. Some of the later level designs are also fiendishly difficult, and involve hitting bells at certain times to make a short tune. There’s no hint system or any way to change the difficulty, so if you’re stuck at a level, you need to have the patience of a saint in order to get through it without screaming at your PC. The main ‘Inventor’ mode is your classic one-after-another puzzle mode, but if you want you can play the ‘Challenge’ mode, which is split into Moves and Time – you can play a level with a minimum number of moves or within a strict time limit in order to earn more stars. With close to 50 levels to get through, there’s enough here to keep you happy, if you hold your nerve while playing the later levels.

Graphically the game does surprisingly well. The levels implement the “steampunk” theme extremely well, with shade of bronze and gold making you feel like you’re tinkering with the inner workings of some great mechanical beast. The audio is also very well done – each cog and gear makes a loving click as it spins into place, and blasts of steam whistle through winding copper pipes. It’s all a very authentic mechanical experience, and its easy to appreciate the painstaking effort that’s been taken when designing the game.



Cogs is certainly a great game to play if you’re up for a challenging puzzle game, but only if you have the patience to bear some of the excruciatingly difficult levels later on. Still, it’s a stellar effort of a game, and one that not only tests your mettle, but will have the cogs in your head whirring around as you crack each puzzle.