In this hectic world we live in, many times work and appointments must come before the fun and joys in our lives, including that of getting to play videogames whenever we want. Gone are the days when we could fire up a game of our choice and spend hours toiling away – now we seem to game in stolen moments here and there. With that in mind, perhaps it is no wonder that casual games have become such a popular gaming choice (especially with women who make up the vast majority of casual game players), as casual games allow us to either jump in and get those quick fixes of gaming bliss or either play them for as long as we want when we do have the time. In honor of the casual game, we'll be bringing you a new Casual Game of the Week every Monday to help you find that fix you might be needing in your life, and this week we have: Azada.

There's something about a good puzzle that manages to arouse the brain and please the mind. We like solving crossword puzzles, sudoku, and participating in contests where the winner isn't so much determined by sheer luck, but rather skill based around their intellect. We like taking part in these puzzles, because though they might stump us from time to time, if we can come up with the solution, we feel like the smartest person alive. Twitch gaming is great and all, but a well-figured out solution can be just as great and rewarding as a headshot from a sniper in Halo to a bloody chainsaw kill in Gears of War.

Azada is the newest puzzle game to come out, and where it succeeds so wonderfully is in the fact that there isn't much in the way of repetition, ensuring that your play from beginning to end remains unique and consuming. Too often puzzle games will rely on one mechanic, forcing you to play through the same gameplay mechanics over and over until you finally beat the game, and by the end (or even before then for that matter) we're bored with the same old same old. Variety is the spice of life, and so we never settle on one thing, focusing only on it, but instead we branch out and dally where our interests take us. Azada is much like that, because though a few things may be shared, the brain is always working overtime as new puzzle after new puzzle is solved, with the blandness of repetition being nowhere in view.

The story of Azada involves you waking up one day in a strange place, which looks like a library of sorts. A voice speaks to you, and suddenly you find yourself investigating a book, where page after page is solved with puzzle. However, you've been told that by solving the puzzles, you'll be able to help an old man free himself from his endless prison, and perhaps you'll unlock his strange story and the secrets of the book: Azada. Though the story doesn't come at you quickly, the scattering of text here and there does fill-in the story's missing pieces, and does indeed weave a pretty interesting tale. However, the reason you'll find yourself continuing from one puzzle to the next is because you want to see more and more of the puzzles and test your wits against them.

The way the game plays out is that there is a magical painting which you must uncover, so that you may free the mysterious stranger from his prison. For each fragment of the painting, you'll need to play through eight or nine individual puzzles, and only after all of them are completed will you be able to tackle the final puzzle, which upon completion erases a piece of the prison painting. Though you need all the opening puzzles to beat that specific level, you can unlock the ability to earn special orbs, which you can then use to automatically solve a puzzle you might be having a hard time with. You'll also not want to settle and think on one puzzle for too long, because each puzzle fragment only allows you so much time to solve it or else your game is over. Generally the time issue shouldn't be a problem, as it seems ample enough and shouldn't cause a problem unless you randomly click on a few puzzles, which will penalize you for doing so instead of really thinking about what you should do. So, for once, the game rewards you for actually using your brain instead of random trial and error.

The puzzles that get the most attention are those that play like a typical point-and-click adventure game, where you are given a setting and then you have to search it over for hotspots, and then either grab the items you need that are based on a search list given to you, or either using those items to solve a situation in the environment. For instance, one puzzle has you having to find a matchbox and an individual match, where you'll use the match to strike it on the box, and then use the lit match to burn a piece of paper. The flow is pretty natural, though a couple of these prove tricky.

But as we said, these aren't the only type of puzzles in the game, as there are a ton of different ones, such as having to match butterflies, match stamps, perform color coded sequences, figuring out the correct combo pattern, jumping pegs so only four remain on a board, placing matches so you form four triangles, moving different sized circles from one peg to the next under various circumstances, and much, much more. The point is that you'll always stay focused and want to keep moving on to see what is next. Some of the puzzles can be done extremely quickly, while others might require a few more minutes. However, no puzzle should take an insane amount of time, so you'll be breezing through these at a rather nice pace.

The sound work is soothing and comforting, but nothing too out there or anything that breaks down the barriers of a puzzle game. The graphics are much like the sound, in that they don't particularly excel beyond belief, but they properly do the puzzles justice and don't take away from the puzzle solving challenges at all.

I was pleasantly surprised while playing Azada, as I didn't expect it to be so fun and interesting. Also, as I'm writing this review right now, my mind keeps going back to Azada, wanting to see what comes next, and that right there is the sign of a great game. You know you've stumbled upon a great game when you have a ton of stuff going on, such as work for instance, and yet all you want to do is play. Azada, if I lose my job, I'm so blaming you. Don't pass up on Azada and be sure to give it a play.

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