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The Heist for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad

You see it in those Hollywood favorites, all those exciting capers involving crackerjacks in black with their ears against the vault, listening for the pins dropping into place and unlocking the vault. Well, here’s your chance to get your crack at a vault and get at the prize waiting behind the vault door. Well, not quite. You’re not going to your nearest bank and you’re not going to be putting your ears against the vault door. You aren’t even going to do anything related to the actual cracking of the safe. However, you are going to unlock the vault by get this, solving puzzles. Yes, a bit of a letdown as I was expecting something a bit more exciting and somewhat related to cracking a safe.

You receive a call from Sophia. She’s informed you that you’ve been assigned a mission to unlock a vault and your predecessor didn’t make it. Not a lot of encouragement but you make a go at this.

The object of the game is to unlock the multi-layered, multi-level vault and get the prize behind the vault door. To do so, you will need to solve various different types of puzzles. There are four types of puzzles, each with 15 individual puzzles ranging from a level of one to four lightning bolts. The first puzzle involves blocks similar to Unblock Me. The second puzzle involves placing the correct symbol stone on the board to complete the puzzle. The next puzzle involves moving blocks around a maze to their target. And the last puzzle involves sliding squares to complete the puzzle of wires. Solve the first level of each of the four puzzles and you’ve unlocked the first level of the vault. You will then receive another phone call from Sophia congratulating you on solving the level. However, the job isn’t yet done so you’re back at it again. Complete each level until you’ve unlocked the fourth at which time you’ve unlocked the vault and receive the prize.

Here’s a video which gives a good introduction to the story behind the game.

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For those who want to skip over all the detailed review and just want a summary, you can jump to the review summary

The game involves a vault of four levels of security. Your mission is to unlock all four levels by solving the puzzles and get the loot inside. However, it’s not as simple as it sounds. There are four different types of puzzles of 15 each, each of which range from one to four lightning bolts (levels). Solve the first level in each of the four types of puzzles and you’ve unlocked the first lock of the vault. Solve all the puzzles in each level and you will unlock the vault and get the loot. The puzzles range from moving blocks similar to Unblock Me to moving squares around in a maze to a specific target to placing stones on a board to complete the pattern to moving squares around to complete a puzzle of connecting wires.

There is no time limit or limit on the number of moves or other challenges to solve the puzzle so the challenge is simply to solve the puzzle. However, there is also no “hints” as there isn’t in life, so you are simply working towards solving the puzzle without any aids.

This is a game where you can play it at any time and get back to it at any time and continue where you’ve left off as all completed levels and puzzles are saved.

More details of The Heist for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad (taken from Apple iTunes store)

A Dangerously Addictive Mission

Some puzzle-obsessed nut has rigged up this vault with state of the art defenses! You’ll have to crack a variety of puzzles to short circuit the lasers, security cameras and electrified bars. Are you up for the challenge?

Your Prise Awaits Inside the Vault

Our cake is no lie. Earn it by cracking into the vault and it’s all yours, totally free. What is it? You’ll have to beat The Heist to find out… but it’s fun, and it’s worth much more than the price of entry. Good luck agent!

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Solve puzzles. Crack the vault. Claim the hard-earned prize waiting for you inside.

WARNING! This message will self-destruct in 10 seconds…

? YOUR TOP SECRET MISSION FEATURES ?
? A fiendishly secured vault worth cracking
? 4 types of challenging puzzles
? 60 fun, addictive puzzles to solve
? 19 Game Center achievements to earn
? A valuable prize awaits you at the end!

So what are you waiting for, agent…
CAN YOU CRACK THE VAULT?

Slideshow of The Heist for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad

Video of The Heist for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad

Video review of The Heist for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad

Here are my observations:

I Liked:

Relatively easy to play

The game, once you figure out the puzzles and what you can do for each the first time you play it, gets easy as you have gotten a grasp of what you’re expected to do. Tap or drag to play various puzzles.

Interesting game concept

Who can resist the name of The Heist? Sounds very interesting and that’s what got me interested. The story background of being part of a team to crack open a vault sounds interesting. And to unlock parts of the vault, you’d need to solve puzzles seems intriguing.

4 levels of 4 types of 15 puzzles

There are four levels in each of the four types of puzzles ranging from moving blocks around like Unblock Me to placing pieces in a puzzle similar to Sudoku to moving a cube around to a target to shifting tiles to complete a circuit. Each type of puzzle contains 15 puzzles total ranging from a level one to level four. With 60 puzzles, you are sure be continue playing a long time.

Great game design of Phone contact

What an interesting start to the game! Having the screen show up like a phone call from Sophia, and the ringing sound of xylophones, it certainly piqued my interest. Of course, since I have an iPod Touch, I knew that it wasn’t really a phone call. Great idea.

Supports offline playing

In this day and age of online games, it’s nice to know that this game can be played without any internet access. Play anytime you want, anywhere you want without worrying about not having internet. Yes!

Game Center support

I like that the game offers Game Center support for those who like to be able to get a good feel of how they compare with others.

Sound, music control

The game allows control over the sound and music. You can toggle between having the music and or sound off or on.

No time limit or challenge

I like that this game doesn’t have a time clock or time remaining timer to make it more challenging and obviously make it even harder. Without being forced to make moves or solve the puzzle based on time, the game can be played without such stress.

No moves counter challenge

Similar to the previous point, not having a counter that shows the current number of moves is a good thing as it allows me to figure out how to move my pieces around without having an additional worry about limiting my moves.

No side or bonus games

Although there are 60 puzzles to play and choose from, after a while of playing the four different types of puzzles, they can seem to be almost all the same after a while. This is when having a bonus stage or side game could help keep the game fun and fresh without seeming repetitive.

Great sound effects

I like the sound effects of the game with the futuristic sounds of panels moving, and the clicking sounds when selecting a puzzle. However, I am a bit disappointed that the actual puzzle itself doesn’t offer any sounds.

Game selection support

Although in the beginning when starting out the game, there are several puzzles that are locked or chained up, as you continue solving more puzzles and completing levels, you will unlock many higher level puzzles. You may find that you can choose to play any unlocked puzzle in any level without being forced to play a puzzle over and over again before you can play a different puzzle. I like this a lot as it keeps the frustration level low.

I Didn’t Like:

No music background playback support

The game does not support background music playback and that’s too bad.

Lack of documentation screen, contact

This is the main dislike I have about this game. There is no information screen, no about screen and definitely no how to play screen. This is probably one of the very few games I’ve ever played that doesn’t even have an About screen about the developers and team. The only way I think I can communicate with the developers is through the Rate me button (heart icon in the settings).

When I first played the game, I was a bit confused about what to do, especially with the robot and the cubes. Obviously, I figured it out quickly but still, this is not good to keep your players in the dark about how the game is to be played.

Portrait only

The game is rendered in portrait mode only and it is the best mode to render the game, however I always believe that the choice should be given to the end user whether to play in portrait or landscape.

No hints

Not surprising since there is no information screen anywhere in the game itself or very little information even on the main MacHeist website. The game’s iTunes page has got to be one of the few that has so little information on the game.

Disconnect between puzzles and storyline

Although the puzzles are great and everything, as a reviewer, I am a bit puzzled (pardon the pun) about the disconnect between the relationship between the actual puzzles and the storyline. Okay, you’re expected to short-circuit the lasers, security cameras and so on, but why are you doing puzzles that don’t seem to have anything related or to do with the actual safe or security system? Perhaps the only one that I can relate to is the wires connection one but the others are very iffy at best. If the game involves cracking a safe and disabling security systems, shouldn’t the puzzles have something that should relate to that?

Regardless, the game is great to play but like I said, there’s a disconnect here.

Review Summary

The Heist for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad is an interesting game with a storyline that sounds like it comes out of a crime novel. The story is about cracking the locks of a vault to get to the loot inside. However, to unlock the vault, you’ll need to solve various puzzles to disengage the security system and short-circuit the lasers and so on. However, the puzzles don’t seem to connect very well to the storyline and theme. If you can get past the disconnect, you’ll be able to enjoy the game.

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