The game is beautiful to look at and the soundtrack – available as an MP3 download to purchasers of the game – is polished and suitably laid back. What’s more, tilting the phone in the “tree” views actually tilts the lanterns and blocks hanging from the tree, which really adds to the realism: For example, you can use touch gestures to rotate the object easily in all directions, and control the angle of the rope by tilting the phone. Having said that, it does make really nice use of the iPhone’s touch screen and tilt controls to provide a very realistic experience. Each tree has plenty of puzzles to keep you busy (I haven’t made it to the top of either tree yet), and the fact that you need to score well on early levels in order to move onto higher levels adds an element of challenge to the game.Īlthough touted by some as an original concept, it’s actually derived from the free PC game Zen Bondage (ooo-er). There are two trees: the Tree of Reflection (mainly animal shapes) and the Tree of Challenge (geometric shapes). You need a certain number of open flowers to move up to the next level of the tree. The number of dots you get determines how many flowers will open on the tree you’re currently moving up. When enough of the shape is painted you get a dot paint even more and you get two paint 99% of the shape and you get the full complement of three dots: The rope “paints” the shape where it touches it. The basic idea of the game is simple: You wrap various 3D wooden and metal shapes in a rope of limited length. Some pieces will even present multiple nails, which have at their top an ample reserve of paint, which will spread over a bigger surface, if used, or the rope already comes with paint and helps the player to get a bigger covered percentage.Įvery puzzle solved will yield a certain number of flowers, and the total number of flowers the player earns will help unlock the later levels and consequently the harder ones.I recently bought the game Zen Bound for my iPhone, which has been the subject of much gushing praise amongst various review sites recently, and has been collecting a few awards too. A single touch of that nail and the rope snaps, and you will have to start all over again.Īlso, every piece can be unbound if players feel they could have done something different,and there is no penalty for doing so. The players need to be careful, to avoid it, until it’s necessary. Every puzzle must end with wrapping the rope around a final iron nail. The game also provides some levels of variation. Many gamers will think that the first levels are way too simple, but there will be some serious challenges once they get to the intermediate stages. The simpler the binding, the better it will be. Firstly, the rope has a finite length, so the players must use what is available wisely and not squander it with complicated contortions and strategies. The rope will color the wooden piece, to a certain degree and the final object of a level is to pass a certain percentage of the piece covered. The player must wrap around a wooden piece with a small rope, in certain conditions. Users will have no problem installing the game, but keep in mind that they are not providing the source package, so you cannot compile it.Ī game promoting a concept that was never used before, usually spawns an entire new genre, but I highly doubt that there will be many wooden piece rope binding variants waiting to be released. sh files, for both 32 and 64-bit architectures. To our surprise, the developers were kind enough to provide binaries. We have acquired Zen Bound 2 with the latest Humble Bundle, more precisely Humble Bundle for Android 2. A year later, it became available through the Ovi Store and for the PC platforms.Ī Linux port was done with the occasion of Humble Bundle for Android 2, a collection of games that encompass a lot of interesting other titles: Cogs, Avadon: The Black Fortress, Swords and Soldiers, and Canabalt. Secret Exit, the developers of Zen Bound 2, initially released the game through the App Store, for the Mac OS X platform, back in 2009. Zen Bound 2 is the very definition of an indie game. Nevertheless, Zen Bound 2 is one of the most interesting games to be found on the Linux platform and probably on any other platform, for that matter. You can’t really describe the gameplay mechanism without sounding a little sadistic. Zen Bound 2 is a game that is hard to explain to other people.
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