Quadrillion

(Click to Enlarge)

Packing Puzzle fans rejoice! Meet Quadrillion, a wonderful new puzzle game for one player, from the genius mind of Raf Peeters from SmartGames, which might be the best packing puzzle I've ever tried. With millions of challenges available and a stunning presentation to go with it, Quadrillion is the ultimate game for a bored puzzle fan.

The premise of the Quadrillion game is quite ambitious, to say the least. Four magnetic grids that snap together in countless different ways can provide you with a whopping 4+ million DIY challenges to solve - That's enough challenges to last about 7 and a half years while doing one challenge per minute. It hurts your brain even just by thinking about it. With all these incredible facts, it's easy to understand why this game is so fascinating.

(Click to Enlarge) - Challenge 6 (Start and Solved)

Each of the four grids has a diameter of 4x4 units. They can be arranged in any way, as long as they are joined side by side at half their diameter or at the same height. This is due to the magnets inside the grids that only snap at those positions. When you have your desired configuration, all you have to do is to fit the 12 pieces on the board. Most of the pieces are pentominoes (5 units), but there's a piece with four units and another with only three units.

There are a few obstacles that will make your task a bit more difficult, though. Each grid has one or two (black or white) dots on either side that cover the empty spaces. You cannot put any piece on top of these dots, but all the remaining empty spaces need to be occupied by puzzle pieces. Also, any given piece can occupy empty spaces on multiple grids. In other words, you don't need to place a piece exclusively within the limits of one grid - Think of any board as a unique frame without inside edges. Just an exterior contour to define its shape.

(Click to Enlarge) - Challenge 50 (Start and Solved)

The pieces of the Quadrillion game are what makes it visually so appealing. Each of the 12 pieces have a distinct color, and their round shapes are easy to handle. They're also rather big and made from strong and durable plastic, almost indestructible. When you solve any of the countless challenges, the colorful effect is quite beautiful.

If millions of challenges weren't enough for you already, included with the game is a booklet with 60 challenges divided in five difficulty levels, to get you started. When you manage to master all of these, you can create your own challenges, since there's still over 3999940 available challenges. The difficulty ranges from easy (Starter) to extremely difficult (Wizard). The first challenges have most of the pieces already in place at the board, but the harder ones have only one and even zero pieces, so you have to figure out where each piece goes. Also, an interesting fact to take into account: every single one of the 4+ million challenges have at least one possible solution, and many of them, the custom (DIY) challenges can reach thousands of solutions. The ones included in the challenge booklet, however, have only one solution each.

(Click to Enlarge) - My Own Challenge (Start and Solved)

Closing Comments:

Quadrillion, for all the incredible facts stated above and some more, can be easily considered a masterpiece. With a dynamic game board, with millions of challenges to last for a lifetime, Raf Peeters' Quadrillion is indeed the ultimate packing puzzle. Probably the best logic game by SmartGames yet...

Availability: You can get a copy of Quadrillion or any other SmartGames product at PuzzleMaster.

Links:

SmartGames Official Website