IOS Review #114: Telepaint

Title: Telepaint
Developer: Acid Nerve
Platforms: IOS Universal
Price: $2.99
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In this follow-up to their boss-slaying debut Titan Souls, developer Acid Nerve bring a new array of pixel art challenges to mobile, this time of the more cerebral category. Telepaint combines easy controls perfectly suited for touch with tricky space-bending puzzles.

Telepaint's format is simple: you're a paint bucket trying to reach a waiting brush. Auto-walking makes that goal an arduous one, but thankfully, each level features a number of portals that you can link to teleport around the environment.  Activating these portals are the core of Telepaint's puzzles, requiring timing and planning to survive hazards and tricky puzzle elements.

While auto-movement and the need to manually link portals together may sound like a recipe for hectic gameplay, Telepaint quite brilliantly lets you pause the game and tap portals while time is stopped, This small addition turns what could have been fast-paced game of hurried taps into one where thinking steps ahead is the key to success. You must consider what direction you'll exit portals, how that will make you bump off walls, and how you'll interact with certain obstacles, and pausing the game gives you the time to mull over which portals to use.

While early levels only have you thinking about portals, soon Telepaint begins adding more puzzle elements, from spikes and movable blocks to gravity swapping and clones. Colored keys will unlock blocks of the same color, while switches will disable or activate platforms when you walk pass, and so on. These elements are combined in all manner of permutations, creating crafty scenarios that challenge your ability to plan ahead. Which direction to push a block, which order to grab keys, when to activate switches, all these parts to consider means this seemingly simple puzzler isn't as easy as it may appear.

The colorful bright tone of Titan Souls can be seen here too, through Telepaint's charming pixel art and the explosions of paint that coat the landscape with each death. Tough levels soon become color-splashed. artful reminders of your past attempts.

Telepaint features over 100 levels and is available for $2.99. You can find the game here.