Steam engine, pipes, gears, nuts and bolts, nuts and bolts. One more time now!  I don’t know about you but if a puzzle game had us writing an original song, it must be good.

Cogs ($0.99)

Chillingo and Lazy8 Studios’ Cogs is one the most frustratingly challenging puzzle games to ever hit the store. I say frustrating loosely as the game is so challenging it becomes fun and addicting.  If you thought slider puzzles are getting boring, this game just gave the genre a much needed rattling!

Presentation

I’m not gonna lie. Even on a Touch 2G, the graphics look AMAZING. The game is fully 3D (or 2.5D if you don’t rotate the object, or the object in that particular level does not require rotating), you can rotate the object around as you want, and the everything is very detailed, very crisp, and very smooth. Even the menu is 3D!

My favorite part is that apart from the detailed machines, you always trigger something to happen, sometimes the contraption to fly (or the balloon to fill up making it float). And sometimes the crank starts moving and you get jack in the box (no not food the toy).

Controls

The controls are pretty easy for iPhone (and will probably work out great on the iPad as well). Drag two finger on the screen to rotate the object, and tap / drag a block to the direction you want to move it. That’s it.

Gameplay

Cogs is a popular puzzler from PC, and the iPhone version isn’t a port, it’s the real deal on iPhone. The gameplay consists of various machines that you need to assemble and “make it work”. You do this by moving cogs into the right place, placing valves properly to get gas to the proper place, and so on.

Cogs goes from pretty simple to holy sh$%! It begins quite simple, just a few cogs, but gets harder and involves more gameplay elements, like directing steam to make the cogs turn, then specific cogs to ring bells, etc. Cogs has just taken over Gears, my PREVIOUS favorite iPhone puzzle, as my NEW favorite puzzle game.

Conclusion

The great thing about Cogs is that it starts out at only $1. For $1 you get the first ten levels, including tutorial, that give you a good taste of what Cogs has to offer. Once you finish those (and get hooked) there are four DLC packs to buy, each at $1.

It’s really great because you get the full PC version of Cogs, one step at a time if you can’t afford to spend $5 at once. Cogs is a great puzzler on PC, and the iPhone version is just as great. Definitely not one to miss out.