Artful Balancer is like no matching puzzler you’ve played before

How to describe Artful Balancer? Imagine Tetris, but with the tetrominoes falling onto a plank resting on a fulcrum. If too many land on one side or the other the whole lot will tip into oblivion, so you need to …

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How to describe Artful Balancer?

Imagine Tetris, but with the tetrominoes falling onto a plank resting on a fulcrum. If too many land on one side or the other the whole lot will tip into oblivion, so you need to maintain an equal distribution of blocks.

That’s a good place to start, but it only scratches the surface of Artful Balancer’s ingenious gameplay.

There are three main types of ball falling into the screen: coloured, patterned, and weighted. The aim is to achieve perfect symmetry on either side of the central column, all while trying to avoid a fatal overbalance.

As you can imagine, this is pretty tricky to do, so there are several “friends” to help you. These include a pause feature, a slowdown feature, a spirit level, and balance weights to highlight any hazardous imbalances that are occuring.

Then there are the boosters, one of which lets you boost all the way through the level without earning any gold. It’s not a rewarding option, but it’s very helpful in a pinch.

On the other side of the coin there are “enemies”, in the form of hazard balls that inflict chaos by suddenly removing balls or blocking columns.

Artful Balancer boasts three different level types — Normal, Strategy, and Puzzle — arrayed across four different worlds: Forest, Desert, Pyramid, and Ice.

Collectively they call on all of your patience and guile as you try arrange various block types into an incredibly specific arrangement while balancing them on a wobbly board using whatever strategy works.

Do you hug the central column to create a centre of balance and then branch out later to create the symmetrical pattern? Or do you aim for symmetry right from the get go, potentially getting there faster but in a more high risk fashion?

Either way, you’re in for a unique challenge. Artful Balancer is like nothing you’ve ever played before, and it’s available for free right now on the App Store.