Review by Jon Donnis
Two Hundred Ways is the latest puzzle game that graces the screens of the Nintendo Switch, for this review I will be playing on the Switch Lite.
The sequel to One Hundred ways, (which I have not played), Two Hundred Ways has a simple concept, you start each level releasing a ball, the ball will then follow gravity and roll along, your job is to place objects that will affect the roll of that ball, and ultimately guide it to the end position.
Of course, things get trick fast and you will have obstacles to overcome, or even use to your advantage.
There are 200 levels as you might have guessed, and these are in blocks of 10 which sees the levels having a certain graphical theme.
Things start out nice and simple, place a spring, and the ball will jump a hole, place a speed up and the ball will whizz past a fan that might try to change its direction. But pretty quickly after getting a taste for the mechanics of the game, the levels start getting harder and more intricate, meaning you will need plenty of practice runs, and analysis of the level to find the best route to the finish.
Eventually you will unlock 40+ tools to help you guide the ball, and as the levels get harder you will have to keep an eye on up to 3 balls at once, and just when you think you have it mastered, the game throws added layers to a level.
The game in some ways reminds me of the Bridge Constructor games, in that you can start time, stop it, reset the level, more pieces around, and keep trying to your get it right, the controls can be a bit tricky at first, especially on the small screen, and the tutorial screens have a few grammatical mistakes, but you will get the hang of it, luckily you can zoom in and out of the levels, move the camera view around which will really help you map out where you need to go, and of course when you get massively stuck there are plenty of walkthroughs online.
The game will in my opinion slightly trick you with the learning curve, I say this as early on I was getting through the levels pretty quickly, and then suddenly I was faced with a really tricky looking level, so I tried using the various tools at my disposal, making ever more intricate routes for the ball to travel, but I just couldn't figure it out, so in the end I had to do the one thing I hate and that is look up a solution online. The solution itself showed that the answer was way more simplistic than what I had been trying, so the lesson here is to try and keep things simple, and not make things more complicated when it is not needed. The spring tool is the best one early on, and will be your friend for at least the first quarter of all levels, but don't ignore the other tools, they are there to help you.
The Good
This is a really good puzzle game, loads of levels, a fair learning curve, and a scoring system that works on how much money you spend to place tools, so the more tools you use, the more money you spend, the more money you spend, the lower your final ranking and score, so if you want that gold medal, you need to find the simplest way to complete the level and not the fanciest.
The Bad
A few typos here and there and grammatical errors, which I assume will be fixed in updates, and if not they dont really make much difference to the game. Plus I am sure I make plenty of typos in my reviews, so perhaps I should be quiet on this one.
Overall
I really enjoyed Two Hundred Ways, and I will probably now seek out the original game.
I score Two Hundred Ways on Nintendo Switch a really strong 8/10
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