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Finding a truly great mobile puzzle game can be a wonderful, life-changing thing. Whether you use them to shorten your commute, kill time in a waiting room or compete on the leaderboards, a truly solid endless puzzler is a great way to fill the downtime in your life. For many folks, that spot has been held for years by Threes! (or, for bad people, by 2048) — one of those games that you can feel yourself getting better at the more you play.
Next week, a new challenger to the throne appears — and, like Threes!, it shares a preoccupation with exponentially growing numbers. Meet Twofold Inc., the new game from Swedish indie developer Grapefrukt, who you may remember from his hyperminimalist real-time strategy game Rymdkapsel. Almost like a cross between a traditional swipe-the-matching-colors puzzle game and a restaurant management game, Twofold Inc. has players sliding the game board to make chains of colors must be cleared entirely in one swipe, in service of clearing 'requests' that come in from the top of the screen. Each sequential block in a chain increases its value twofold, but the longer the chain, the more challenging it'll be to connect in one swipe — leading to some interesting tension between safely clearing small combos and building longer (and much more lucrative) chains.
Above, watch us play through Twofold Inc.'s brief tutorial, hop into a standard round, discuss the merits of one-handed portrait-mode mobile gaming, and revel in the realization that this game is, thank goodness, not a free-to-play game.
Twofold Inc. is available now on the iTunes App Store and Google Play for $3.99. For more information, head to twofoldinc.com.