TransPlan is a simple Physics Puzzler game, I thought I had played it previously on somewhere like Kongregate but could not find a record of it there. The game came in a bundle and today I sat down to work my way through it after struggling with a different puzzle game.

Overall there's not a lot to this one, but it entertained my for around 2 hours or so and I found it enjoyable enough to report on.

The style is of a pencil drawn paper schematic where the puzzle is laid out as the plan. Objects have a weight determined by how shaded they are; near white, light grey, and dark grey.

The aim of the game is to move the shaded blue square or circle into the lighter blue square or circle. As physics suggest, the circles move around a lot far more than the squares do.

White objects can be flung around with relative ease, but don't have much pushing power. Light grey objects are heavier and can push other objects around. Dark grey objects are usually fixed to the screen. The game quickly introduces you into how they interact with each other over the first couple of puzzles.
At the start of each round, each object is fixed in place, gravity only takes effect when the object is clicked on or another object interacts with it.

Early on, you are taught how to pin objects to the screen allowing you to temporally fix them in place. Larger objects can have multiple pivoting 'pin' points, and pinning at one end and causing another object to interact with them can cause it to spin and flip around the pin point.

After a few puzzles the game starts teaching you how to use the momentum of this effect to your advantage and how you can find a solution. You're not thrown right in and are given a few simple puzzles to start off with. But you will be expected to remember the more complex methods in later puzzles as more and more techniques are introduced.
Thankfully the game is on the easy side and does not overwhelm you. You can also quite out and practise on earlier levels to find out what you may be missing.

Along with pinning, you can 'erase' white and light grey objects from the screen. At first this is set up just to have something blocking you from solving the game. Later on you can use it to set up flips, and determine when other objects should fall down into place, or release a third object to block the second.

Difficulty eases up slowly over the game, and there were only a few levels near the end of the game where I got stuck for a few minutes. Taking a break and returning later helped as in many cases I was over thinking the solution and instead found a much more simple way to complete the level.

Out of the 80 or so missions in the game, I only came across one puzzle that relied on timing to solve it. All the others you can consider turn based and don't need to hit things in a precise sequence to complete.

To be honest, the one that I had to do this way was probably not required to be done the way I did it. Puzzles tend to have a few ways to do them, as many I was able to complete under the minimum number of moves listed. Aside from the achievements I could not find any major penalty to going 'over par', however the later levels do require a number of the earlier ones to be completed before you can progress.

TransPlan is a rather casual and easy puzzler game, and does feel like the type of game I'd expect to see on a Flash site rather than on Steam. It is only $3USD and did give me a few hours of entertainment and a higher production value than the majority of web games. A few head scratchers but nothing that would start to send my hairs grey(er) in trying to solve.

If you're looking for a puzzle game with a lower challenge level, I'd say it is worth your time to look at. People who like more difficult games may walk away disappointed it was not harder, but for everyone else it's a chance to try this genre without feeling like you are working rather than having fun.

Game Acquisition: Purchased on Sale (Bundle Stars)
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Thread: 1 - 21 February 2016
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009

OS: Windows 7
Processor: 1GHz Processor
Graphics: 3D graphics card with 512Mb

Additional Notes: I was able to run this on Vista64 without any issues or crashes. Game worked right off the install without running or heat related issues.