There are nearly a dozen different F2P Puzzle Games on the Playstation Store. Today we are taking a look at two of them: 'HIQ Ace' and 'HIQ Ace Unlimited'!
Both games are extremely similar. They share the same design and gameplay. In both games you have to solve classic art puzzles by placing puzzle pieces in the correct position and revealing a target picture. Both games have 3 different game modes: Relax, Arcade and Expert.
In Arcade you have the choice between 6 different puzzle pieces and one missing part of the puzzle is highlighted, in which one of the 6 selected puzzle pieces fits. You can however also place one of the other 5 pieces in the right spot, if you can guess it without assists. You have a short time limit of around 10-15 seconds to place a puzzle piece correctly before the selection of 6 pieces and the highlighted spot are being replaced with new ones. If you place enough pieces correctly in a short enough time, than a boost bar will fill, which will allow you to auto-place 1, 3 or 5 pieces for you.
The Expert Gamemode is very similar to Arcade, just that you can now rotate puzzle pieces, which makes it significantly more difficult to place them. Because of the strict time limits I actually found this gamemode to be a bit stressful. As the name suggests, this Gamemode is mostly aimed at big Puzzle fans looking for more of a challenge.
In the Relax Gamemode all time limits and the boost bar are removed. This is the right mode for Puzzle Purists and is probably the closest to the experience of Puzzles in real life.
All 3 Gamemodes feature 3 difficulties, which only change the size of the puzzles. You can also take a peak at the full puzzle image at any time for a quick orientation in all 3 modes, but it is not a see-through hint like in 'AAA Dynamic Scenes' for example.
HIQ Ace and HIQ Ace Unlimited both only feature 6 different Puzzles for free. The rest have to be purchased for money. A big difference between the games is, that HIQ Ace locks both the Relax and the Expert Gamemode behind a Paywall, while HIQ Ace Unlimited gives you access to all 3 off them for free. Other than that however, the gameplay in both games is identical.
HIQ Ace features 31 additional DLC Level packs, which sum up to 192 Puzzles in total. Except for Levelpack 22 they have however all been removed from the Playstation Store. Instead, you can now buy HIQ Ace Deluxe for 3 Euro/Dollar, which consists of all 192 Puzzles of HIQ Ace. Technically this would be the third HIQ Ace game, but since it is just HIQ Ace with a different name and all Puzzles unlocked, I won't be treating it like a separate game ( I also just don't want to purchase it). Interestingly enough the HIQ Ace base game has been removed from the North American PSN Store, while it is still available in the EU Store. American users would therefore have to either purchase HIQ Ace Deluxe or download HIQ Ace from a different server region.
HIQ Ace Unlimited on the other hand features 6 additional Level Packs, which can be purchased for 5 Euro in total on the Playstation Store. Unlimited therefore only consists of 42 different Puzzles.
While HIQ Ace only has a PS4 version. HIQ Ace Unlimited also released a PS5 version in 2020, only a few weeks after the global PS5 release. The PS4 and PS5 version however are practically identical. With a magnifying glass you might be able to spot tiny differences in the resolution, but they certainly didn't put any effort in trying to get a true 4K resolution or add anything else to the game. To be fair, it's not entirely true. In the PS5 version you can't purchase Playstation background themes, since they don't exist on PS5.
Let's now also take a short moment to check out whether the HIQ Ace Games are worth playing for achievement hunters. HIQ Ace has 5 easy trophies, which can be completed in around 1 hour. The game has no Platinum trophy and only 1 Gold one. The buy-to-play version HIQ Ace Deluxe features 9 trophies, but also no Platinum and should take a little longer to complete, since you have to finish at least 96 Puzzles.
HIQ Ace Unlimited has two PS4 trophy sets and one PS5 list. The European and North American PS4 trophy lists are identical to that of HIQ Ace. The PS5 list has 7 trophies, including 2 gold trophies, but no platinum and should also be completed in around one hour.
The trophy lists don't feature a platinum, but should still be worth a look for people, who are looking for easy and relaxing 1 hour 100 Percent lists.
Result:
While the core gameplay is very basic in both HIQ Ace Games, it works well and the combo feature brings in a bit of a unique element. These games are particularly well suited for Puzzle Speedrunners, but also offer the relax mode as a calmer alternative. In comparison to some other puzzle games however, both games suffer from a relatively small amount of free Puzzles. Puzzle Galaxy, Piece out Avatarland and Puzzle Drop Carnival all offer significantly more puzzles for free. While the HIQ games might still be worth a look for trophy hunters, they lack the ominous Platinum trophy that a lot of F2P Puzzle games offer. HIQ Ace Unlimited is clearly the better of the two games, if we only consider the free base games. Without the the additional Relax and Expert modes, HIQ Ace lacks in variety in comparison and is therefore one of the weaker F2P Puzzle Games. HIQ Ace Unlimited on the other hand is in my opinion clearly part of the better half of F2P Puzzle Games on Playstation.
HIQ Ace: 5.5/10
HIQ Ace Unlimited: 6.5/10
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