Spot the Difference

When I was a wee lad, I used to really dig those puzzles in Highlights magazine when there was a line drawing and you had to find all of the objects hidden in the picture. Since then it's become more common to see puzzles with two images where you have to find the differences. Nowadays they're showing up in the magazines my children read, but with Spot the Difference I have more such puzzles than I could possibly need.

Spot the Difference turns this experience digital on Android and shows you two colorful photos that are ever so slightly different and adds the pressure of a timer to the challenge. You will frantically search the images for the five differences. Not to be cliché, but this is another ideal mobile game... quick, simple, and fun (or maybe torture to the visually imperceptive). In the graphics and sound department there's really nothing to say. The color photos are nice and there isn't anything much in the way of sound that would even be necessary. Sure, they could have added annoying timer sounds or something, but fortunately they did not. When you find a difference you just touch the screen wherever said difference is noticed. If you're wrong then you suffer a penalty and are buzzed, but if you're right a friendly, green circle appears and one of the five notches in the upper right is filled in.

What this game feeds on, though, are the puzzles and the interface for adding and managing puzzle packs is quite nice. You can view available packs and download them from within the game. Furthermore, you can disable them if you're sick of solving fish puzzles and even delete them to free up space so that you don't have to have all of the artwork ever created for this game stored on your phone. The game also offers leader boards so that you can become the best of the best when it comes to being observant.

About the only thing I didn't like was that some of the puzzles seem quite hard... I'd find three or four of the difference, but just not be able to find the last one. The timer would run out and it would quickly flash where the difference was, but not give me enough time to really see it before returning to the menu. It would have been nice had I been given control to decide when I'm done looking at the solution.

There are other puzzles of this kind and even one with the same name. I haven't tried them all, but I can say that this is a quality job and a game I'd recommend to those that like this kind of game. 4.5/5 stars.