Twisted Lines review - A colorful challenging puzzler

Twisted Lines isn't the first game to feature color swapping and colored gates, nor the first to challenge you to navigate tight levels to reach a waiting exit.

But through its vibrant aesthetic and well-crafted puzzles, Twisted Lines proves to be a challenging entry to the genre.

Twisted Lines eases you into its colorful labyrinths, teaching you the basics of dragging a colored cube and backtracking to pass through its two-toned tail the cube leaves in its wake. Passing through the tail changes the color of the cube, and the color change hinges on which side you intersect.

As you progress from friendly tutorials to tricky stages, positioning and space becomes crucial to consider. These spatial challenges force you to think several movements ahead, so you can reach the colored gates in the correct hue and direction.

And that's merely the first chapter. Continue through the game's nine chapters, and you'll find a diverse array of mechanics that build on that color-swapping foundation. Portals let you choose where to exit, setting up previously-impossible intersections. Erasers dissolve your tail, opening up the space for new paths through a stage. Multiple cubes involve manipulate additional colors and trails.

These mechanics never drastically change the basics of color switching, but Twisted Lines finds a solid balance between cleverly evolving its formula without feeling overwhelming.

Twisted Lines delivers both puzzle-wise and aesthetically, as the cube snappily follows your finger and its trail twisting and intertwining, the level changing hue in sync with your cube's color.

Hints are available through in-app purchases, but Twisted Lines is fair enough that you probably won't need them: tricky enough to offer a decent brain-teasing challenge, simple enough to easily grasp its mechanics.