Format: iPhone (version tested), PC, Mac
Release: Out now
Developer: Jason Rohrer

Every decent puzzle game has its signature moment, when the pieces align, the fireworks go off, and the points start to pile up. Some of them, such as clearing a four-line block in Tetris, are built from careful planning, while others, like an incredible long range rebound in Peggle, are creatures of broad fluke. Primrose’s signature, however, is a combination of the two: the game’s at its best when foresight meets luck, and they work in tandem to power you up the leaderboard.

Such a unique partnership is the product of a game whose rules are both simple and pedantic, while its blend of neon style and clockwork mechanics render it an unlikely meeting between John Travolta and Heinz Wolff. Primrose is the work of Jason Rohrer, whose best-known previous freeware title, Passage, brushed the periphery of gaming to create a poignant slide across the trajectory of a person’s life. It was a magic trick of sorts, when you consider the whole experience was conjured from little more than directional controls and 8bit-style graphics, and while Rohrer’s latest offering is far more traditional, it creates equally elaborate results from its economical elements.

A block-clearing challenge set on a small grid, the task is to lay down coloured tiles, fencing in clumps of a single shade with walls built from another. Once this is done, the surrounded area disappears in a modest shower of points, and the outer tiles take on its hue, potentially setting a chain in motion. To complicate matters, Primrose always hands you tiles in sets of two, demanding that the second is placed in the same row or column as the first. Every so often, it also throws another colour into the mix.

Because of the starkly glowing presentation and simple rules, getting to grips with Primrose can be an austere exercise. Persevere, however, and a surprisingly deep game awaits. Strategies are created and discarded in quick succession, chance mistakes can spur lasting techniques, and the first time you inadvertently trigger a full-blown chain, sending a staggered Mexican wave of tile changes fluttering unpredictably across the board, you’ll get a genuine sense of meddling with forces you will never entirely comprehend.

Unless you do comprehend them, of course, which some of the top scorers’ replays (one of the game’s handful of thoughtful additions, another being display options for colourblind players) suggest is indeed possible. By simply carving the screen into different sections and applying bloody-minded patience you can muscle your way to the top of the leaderboards by setting out a handful of modestly rewarding wall structures and grinding your way to victory. As with many other puzzlers, Lumines being a prime example, Primrose is susceptible to the entirely methodical manner of points gathering, a process that utterly strips it of its charm.

Play fast and loose, however, and Primrose will offer you a strange disco dancefloor riff on Go or Othello. Rohrer may have left the world of pure art games behind for the time being, away from one-shot attempts at exploring human themes, but his cerebral tendencies aren't entirely absent and his first puzzle title is a claustrophobic and often organic game. The board slowly fills, your tiles shifting, spreading and swarming like bacteria until all the playable space is gone. Thoughtful and sly, Primrose revels in the surprising connections between the simplest spaces and, inevitably, offers a little geometric insight to even the least mathematically inclined of players. [7]