Chromixa for iPhone

Recently, a whole crop of multisensory games have sprung up to take advantage of the iPhone’s touch screen controls. The puzzle game genre in particular has been flooded with games, but Chromixa, from developer Simon Watson, really gets it right.

Chromixa is a puzzle game with a twist: though you manipulate basic shapes and colors to create a bigger shape in a particular hue, you can’t rely on the color mixing rules from your grade school art classes.

Chromixa’s puzzle pieces are meant to be made of light, therefore their primary colors are red, blue, and green while the secondary colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow. Mix them all together and they make white. How you mix the colors and in what positions the shapes are ultimately determines how you can solve the puzzle.

Confused? No worries. An elaborate tutorial spells it all out for you and a convenient color wheel in the top right corner of the screen will refresh your memory.

You can choose an easy, medium, or difficult series of puzzles, which start off simply but become progressively more complicated. If something interrupts your session, it will save your progress for next time. If you’re short on time, there are three mini games to play. The first is available to you when you first start the game but the rest are unlockable with points earned from solving puzzles.

Avid players might want to pace themselves, though, as there are only 48 total puzzles. The developer promises “lots of free updates” in the iTunes store description, so hopefully more levels are on the way.

Chromixa is a great brainteaser yet quite simple and even relaxing, especially if you turn up the volume and listen to the soothing soundtrack. Puzzle game enthusiasts will rejoice.

[Meghann Myers is an editorial intern for Macworld.]