Pros
Cons
Our Verdict
Watch your fingers, or Slice HD will cut them off. The gruesome iPad puzzle game, by TwitchGames, simultaneously tests your dexterity, your patience, and your stomach’s fortitude. This violent game is not complex, but it does a great job at tricking you into thinking it is.
In every level of Slice, you can see a pile of knives. Somewhere buried beneath the knives is a button. Using your fingers, you most move the knives around in just the right way so you can press the button. There are a couple catches, however. All the knives are spring loaded, so if you take your fingers off them, they quickly swing back to their original places. Also, the knives are incredibly sharp, so if you even touch one of their edges, you can “cut” a finger off—-which is a gruesome sight because very realistic-looking fake blood splatters across your screen.
Though Slice levels share the same objective, they are hardly the same. The game does a great job at mixing up level challenges. Knives are never in the same place from level to level. In some levels, you can only move knives backwards, while in others you can only move them sideways. In a few levels, you have to use all of your fingers to hold back knives, while in a few others you only have to use a couple digits. Essentially, Slice levels don’t look, or play the same.
The challenge with Slice HD is that the game is like a high-stakes game of “Twister” for your fingers. I was astonished at how many positions my fingers could be placed in. In some levels, you really have to think about where you’re going to place your fingers. If you place some fingers far apart from others, you may neglect other digits and possibly get them cut off. If you place fingers close together, you may have trouble separating knives. The game never felt dull to me because I really had to think about where I was going to place my fingers in levels, before I played them. You have to use strategy a lot in Slice HD.
Though no level in Slice identical, the game can get repetitive. If you fail a level in the game, you to have to go back and play its predecessor level before you can retry it. I never completed a level on my first try, and very rarely did I complete one on my second try. So, when I completed a level in the game, it was only after I had played it, and its predecessor level, over and over again—which is a tiring thing to do.
After a short while playing Slice, I had to turn off the game’s sound. I had trouble repeatedly hearing the sound of fingers getting severed. It made my skin crawl. The game’s sound effects are almost too effective. If you’re not fond of hearing digits get chopped off, I would suggest turning off Slice’s sounds when you play it.
Slice is not a complex game. All of its levels essentially share the same objective. However, the game differentiates its levels’ challenges enough to make them never feel dull. I wasn’t pleased that I had to repeatedly replay some of its levels, or that I had to repeatedly hear some of its gruesome noises, but I am definitely not against the idea of playing Slice again.
[Sam Felsing is an editorial intern for Macworld.]