The children’s theme, cute artwork, and the name of Mac game Chocolate Castle are very deceptive. This game appears to be a colorful, simple and fun puzzle for kids, but once you get into it, you realize that it’s a complicated strategy driven mind workout. It draws you in by its initial simplicity and keeps you engaged with its intellectual play.

The game has 4 types of animals and 4 different flavors of chocolate to be eaten by the retro looking, cute characters. To play, you click and drag the same color chocolate pieces to form a larger and connected one, then click and drag the same color animal (pig, bear, rabbit and dog) to the chocolate to be eaten. After successful completion, the animal and chocolate will disappear. Sounds easy enough, but is it?

There are many obstacles or challenges to this game. Once the same color chocolate pieces are together, they cannot be separated. However, if you do make a mistake, by clicking undo or redo or enter will allow you to do a do over. Walls cannot be moved, blue blocks can be moved but do not stick together, pink magic blocks can be moved once before they turn into walls, and white ice cubes once moved in one direction keeps sliding until it hits something. The Turkish Delight can be eaten and will explode everything in 8 surrounding blocks. The snakes do not do much, but you can drag their head around the game board. They cannot move backwards and will break in 2 by using a Turkish Delight.

There are 3 modes of play: easy, medium and hard. Each mode has 40 rooms to devour for a total of 120 puzzles. The easy mode will be suitable for young children, and I think they will be happy playing this game. The rest of the puzzles, medium and hard levels, are aimed towards older kids and adults. Solutions can be saved, and you can design and play your own creations.

Chocolate Castle is a blend of the old time board game Rush Hour (get the red, plastic car across the board with different size cars and trucks blocking your passage) , and Tetris (the now famous computer game with different shaped objects floating down to fill the appropriate space). The time just flies by when you are thinking up the possible answer to the dilemma of completing the puzzle in an orderly manner. This game is for anyone who loves to solve difficult puzzles or just want to have a fun and relaxed time playing some of the less challenging games and listening to appropriate arcade-like music. Take the time to enjoy Chocolate Castle and its many rooms.

Features of Chocolate Castle:
-3 modes (easy, medium and hard)
-Save solutions
-120 puzzles
-Retro graphics
-Design your own puzzles
-Turkish Delight

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars