Slider

Slider is a free puzzle adventure game in which you need to get back your cat. This little silly creature shattered the world into pieces before disappearing... it's up to you to fix everything with the help of the Artifact, an item that lets you manipulate chunks of the world. Slider uses the classic 8-tile puzzle as foundation and twists the formula to offer a highly creative and challenging adventure full of humor.

The world of Slider is divided into several 3x3 grids acting as independent 8 puzzles. Except for a starter tile, each area is completely blank when you first enter it. Your goal is to find the other tiles to progressively restore the board until it is complete and correctly arranged.

Some sliding tiles can be found during free exploration, but the majority of them are given by (often funny) NPCs when you complete their quests. Your cat destroyed the world, so it's only fair you give them a hand! Slider is focused on that adventure feeling and its puzzles are smoothly integrated; instead of mere errands, the quests require you to use your sliding powers ingeniously through very diverse challenges such as winning a race, reuniting two lovers or fixing an assembly line.

Sliding tiles of the world is the core of the game, this is (nearly) your only tool and you’ll have to rearrange the areas constantly to make progress. Slider's strength not only lies in the originality of the quests, but also in its ability to vary its sliding mechanics throughout the adventure. Each area has a special gimmick that keeps things fresh. One of them is a factory with conveyor belts that may carry away your tiles. Another one is a magic institute in which you have to time travel and deal with both past and present. The whole game displays an incredible amount of creativity that is especially impressive for a free release.

Slider has a balanced difficulty curve, the game gets harder and harder with each area. The quests may become confusing, as you can get involved in several of them at the same time. Since there is no in-game tool to track the objectives, you may have to do some memorizing. If you’re stuck though, you can still head to the online guide written by the developers, which is linked right from the pause menu. It features a complete walkthrough of the game with multi-step hints and solutions for every slider tile.

This description was written by Andréas Andrieux.