The Digest: This Way That Way is an enjoyable and quirky little indie game, with immensely rewarding puzzles and a cute art style. Just make sure to play the game with your volume down, or at least listen to your own music.

THE FACT SHEET

RELEASE DATE: July 15, 2010
PUBLISHER: Endolith Productions
DEVELOPER: murphwich
GENRE: Puzzle
PRICE: 80 MS Points

PRODUCT OVERVIEW:
Learn to think in a whole new way as you zig and zag through 101 puzzles filled with obstacles. Try to reduce your moves and reach target scores to unlock additional characters. Get your brain ready, while the puzzles start out simple every new element presents a new challenge.

PRODUCT FEATURES:
- Very Rewarding
- Colorful visuals
- Over 75 Puzzles to deal with

This Way That Way is a somewhat intriguing, yet challenging puzzle game in thanks to its unconventional take on the typical block-puzzle games. Instead of trying to push a block into a set destination, the player has to move themselves as far as they can in the direction they are currently heading; however the entire directional cycle must be completed before they can head into another direction.

Although I do admire Endolith Productions for trying something different within the puzzle genre, I feel that the concept is not completely original since I spent a great deal of thinking back to tactics used from the board game Rush Hour. I know that isn’t a fair comparison since Rush Hour had you move multiple cars around, allowing your car to pass through into the next round; TWTW’s map layouts have random blocks placed around that work a lot like the cars and require you to use them to your advantage. With this said, the puzzles are very challenging at times and it does make you feel rather proud of yourself when you managed to find out the correct pattern and complete the level.

TWTW’s art style itself is very delightful and simplistic, with bright and vibrant colors that don’t clash and don’t affect your eyes when playing the puzzles. Yet I feel the most charming thing about the visuals is the unlockable players which you can use during the puzzles, each managing keep their own unique look; even thought they are just remodels of other characters.

As cute and enchanting the characters are in there own way, the puzzle layouts ruin the mood and vibe of the game. Here you have a colorful cast and layout and then you have a bland mixture of browns for the puzzle layouts. If the art team behind this game had managed to create a theme or gimmick for the puzzle layouts, that matched and complemented the playable characters; I would have nothing bad to say about this aspect of the game.

Despite the fact that the game is rather cute to look at, the music for this game is awful and will make you mute your television in moments of hearing it. The songs are very short, sync in and out rather poorly and distract you from the puzzles you are trying to complete.

Conclusion: It’s very rare for a puzzle game to come out and for it break the mold. Althought This Way That Way was unsuccessful in doing so, it at least made some cracks within the foundation and showed us a new way to look at the block puzzle genre. While it’s nowhere near perfect, it is worth downloading for its challenging; yet rewarding puzzles.

Single Player: 3/5 | Multi-Player: N/A

Special thanks to Endolith Productions for providing us with a copy of the game for review.