Jammed - Atari 2600

You can always buy with confidence when Thomas Jentzsch's name is on the game. The man has never failed to deliver. One of his earlier and simpler offerings, Jammed, is a classic "get the marble out of the maze" puzzler.

With 600 unique puzzles, there is plenty here to keep you busy, but the game lacks much reward since you advance to the next puzzle regardless of your success or failure. Also, there is no way to mark progress, so you never really know what puzzle you are on.

That said, if you just want to sit down and have some good mind-stretching fun, this game is a satisfying choice. The puzzles are challenging, but not impossible, and you'll be coming back repeatedly to see if you can solve them in fewer moves.

This is one of those puzzle games that fill up my lunch breaks nicely. I play this on my PSP using save states to help keep track of which puzzles I've solved.

OK, the graphics are not going to set the world alight, but this is a puzzle game and they serve their purpose well. Your aim is quite simple: get that car out of the car park by moving the others around until you create a clear pathway to escape. That's pretty much it. With 600 puzzles to get through, this should last you quite some time.

Maybe there could have been more variety added by shifting the exit here and there and altering the car park size, but even so, the puzzles really do get quite challenging later on. If you play on original hardware, then you'll need to somehow keep tabs on which levels you have solved. I can imagine it getting frustrating forgetting which ones you have done.

Overall, if you like simple to play yet devious puzzlers, then you'll enjoy Jammed. A jolly decent game indeed. 3 out of 5!

Jammed is a sliding puzzle game in which you try to steal a car trapped in a parking lot by moving other cars out of the way. You can only move the cars forwards and backwards, and there\'s only one way out of the lot. Can you escape with the car of your dreams in the required number of moves? Or will you find yourself hopelessly trapped and end up having to take the bus home?Well, you don\'t really have to take the bus home if you lose. The game simply moves onto the next puzzle. In fact, Jammed simply moves onto the next puzzle if you win, too. There\'s no running total to tell you how many puzzles you\'ve successfully solved, or how many you\'ve failed at. There are an impressive 600 puzzle variations in Jammed, ranging from ones even a novice puzzler can handle, to some requiring dozens of moves to solve. Despite the sheer number of variations, they\'re all based on the same basic puzzle. The lot never changes size or shape, and there are no additional challenges like immovable obstacles or different exit locations to help bring more variety to the gameplay.Although the player\'s car looks very nice, the rest of the cars are simple white blocks. Still, the graphics are sufficient, although some additional color would have been welcomed - perhaps making each maze or difficulty level a different color. The option to choose the player\'s car color would also have been a nice feature. There\'s very little sound in the game, except for a couple of short tunes at the end of each puzzle. I kept wanting to hear the sound of cars banging into each other, or the throaty roar of an engine as I made my escape.Jammed is a very good puzzle game, and there are plenty of variations to keep even the most diehard puzzle aficionados occupied. But with no way to track your progress, and 600 variations, it can become frustrating to remember which ones you\'ve solved, and which you haven\'t, or even how many you had solved during a single game, and how many you didn\'t. Nonetheless, Jammed is very successful at being what most puzzle games are - an enjoyable diversion. If you like puzzle games, it\'s well worth having. And at $18, it\'s a downright steal.