JIGSAW PUZZLEMANIA

 JIGSAW PUZZLEMANIA is exactly what the title implies: a jigsaw puzzle game.
Written by Dennis Zander and published by Artworx, this delightful, all-ages
program offers digitized graphics, digitized sounds, easy mouse control, a
puzzle maker that supports DEGAS and ST Replay files, a save option, hard drive
support, and no copy protection. 

 Excluding infants, JIGSAW can be played and enjoyed by gamers of any age. Each
picture can be chopped into as few as 16 pieces (making it eminently suitable
for youngsters), or as many as 230 pieces (more than enough to wreck even the
best pair of eyeballs). JIGSAW fills the gaping hole that exists where family
games once were, and as such, is one of the best all-around packages of 1990.
What's more, Artworx promises continued support with more puzzle disks -- which
is good thing, because the sole glitch in the program involved the puzzle maker.

 JIGSAW is controlled completely via the mouse. The ST screen display includes
the current picture, and a menu bar from which you may access mode selection
(Solo, Competition, Team), a clock, Save/Continue options, and the Create
command that invokes the puzzle maker. In Competition mode, two players, each
with differently scrambled pieces, try to complete the same puzzle; in Team
mode, two players take turns of one, two, or four minutes while attempting to
complete the same puzzle; and in Solo mode, you can put a puzzle together by
yourself, without any time constraints. When the pieces all look identical and
you need help, you can click on any part of the puzzle box and peek at the
complete picture. (In Competition mode, this voyeurism results in a 30-second
penalty.)

 Clicking on Play brings up a sub-screen from which you can select the number of
pieces into which the picture is to be sliced. The picture box blanks out, and
the pieces are displayed along the border. Not all the pieces (even if there are
only 16) will fit on the border, so Artworx uses "pages": Clicking on the
numbers on the menu bar moves from page to page. A puzzle in progress can be
saved, and later restored by way of the Continue command.

 A piece is grabbed by pointing at it with the mouse and clicking the left
button. Move the mouse to where you think the piece fits, click the left button
again, and the piece is either inserted or rejected. Pieces need not be
connected to other pieces; that is, you can place a piece in isolation -- in the
middle of the picture, for instance -- and then work around it, just as you
might in a tangible jigsaw puzzle. This requires luck more than skill because,
unlike a real puzzle, there are no grooved outlines into which the pieces can
fit.

 There are pictures of cars (Porsche, Ferrari), animals (Bengal tiger, parrot),
scenery and still life, and people. Complete a puzzle and you'll be rewarded
with an appropriate digitized sound: revving engines, twittering birds, beastly
roars, and even human voices (an astronaut reports from space, and Marilyn
Monroe speaks her lines from "Some Like It Hot").

 The puzzle maker option didn't work so well. Basically, what you're doing here
is loading a low resolution DEGAS (PI1 or PC1), and resizing it to fit on the
puzzle screen. The height/width picture reductions worked fine; so did the
vertical/horizontal Grab option, which lets you specify how much of the picture
is to become the puzzle.

 While using the "Switch" and Background options, though, parts of a picture
simply vanished behind whacko color schemes, most apparent on digitized and
retouched vidphotos. The easiest and most effective thing to do is load a DEGAS
.P?1 picture, use the size reduction and Grab options to make it fit in the
puzzle box, and leave the colors alone. ST Replay sound files -- those on the
JIGSAW data disk or any that you might have -- can be added to the picture and
saved for later puzzle action.

 The JIGSAW PUZZLEMANIA package comes with two unprotected disks that can be
copied onto backup floppies or to a hard drive. The disks are single-sided but
they are not standard 360K, which means you'll need a special formatting
program. What I did was format two 400K disks with Twister (available from Antic
or CompuServe), and then copy the files. The ST/Amiga instruction manual is slim
and complete.

 JIGSAW PUZZLEMANIA is one of the best all-ages packages of 1990, and at $30
(the price from Artworx), it won't empty your wallet. The graphics are great,
the sounds are terrific, the mouse interface is excellent, and anybody can play
it. If the puzzle maker's color glitches detract from the program at all, they
do so only in the most marginal way, and if Artworx makes good on its promise of
more puzzle disks, it won't matter anyway. All families, listen up: JIGSAW
PUZZLEMANIA is a must-have.

 JIGSAW PUZZLEMANIA is published and distributed by Artworx.

******DOWNLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS (304) 744-2253