Puzzle games come in all shapes and sizes, but when it comes to Neves you can count all the puzzle pieces on your hands – seven. Do you get it? Because Neves is seven backwards? Hey, I didn't pickup on that immediately! Anyways, can a puzzle game where you use the same seven puzzle pieces over and over possibly be good? Surprisingly it can be, and is pretty fun and hard too. Neves is especially different than the usual puzzle games out there.

When you hear about a puzzle game that uses the same exact seven pieces over and over again, it's pretty hard to imagine that it would be possible for that gameplay idea to sustain itself over time or for there even to be many levels that those seven pieces could fit into; it's even more surprising when you find that game contains over 500 puzzles.

Neves is all about being presented a level with the silhouette of a person, item, number, Japanese character, or whatever the silhouette might be, and then trying to use the seven pieces you have to properly lay them over the silhouette so that every piece is used and fit firmly into place. Technically the puzzles remain the same difficulty from beginning to end, but there are ones that are easier to solve than others, where you can solve them in mere seconds or minutes while some could take you a half an hour or more just to see how they are all supposed to properly fit.

The thing that seems to make levels easier or harder is the fact that some level silhouettes have shapes that standout from the others, looking exactly like one of the seven pieces you have, so that shape basically automatically has a pre-assigned place it needs to go, reducing your pieces and therefore your odds. For instance, if you were just given a solid square, you'd have a harder time placing everything properly since nothing immediately stands out; but if you have a puzzle where you can easily see the two triangle pieces separating themselves from the crowd, you then only need to fiddle with five pieces to complete the silhouette.

The game is completely touchscreen controlled, as you'll touch on the puzzle pieces with your stylus to drag them into their proper places, you'll click on the edge bubble points to rotate the shape, and you'll double-tap the shape to get it to flip over. You'll have to use every one of these moves constantly throughout the game, as no puzzle can be done by just dragging the pieces into play as they are presented at the beginning of a level. For a game with such a simple concept, it's disappointing that the controls are so unpolished, as you can't easily turn pieces if they are on the edge, it's easy to lose the grip of your bubble to turn them, dragging pieces into small spaces is a trial and error science, and when you get two pieces too close together or on top of each other, it's often hard to easily move between one and the other. The controls don't make the game unplayable, but it can be frustrating at times.

Besides giving you a ton of silhouettes to complete, the game also gives you many ways to do them to increase your difficulty. If you just want to try and complete the silhouettes you can go the un-timed route and experiment with placement all you want until you solve one. The next step in difficulty comes the timed route, where you have to try and complete the puzzle in a short amount of time. Finally you can go the 7Step route, where you have to complete the puzzle by moving every puzzle piece only once. It's easy to complete the levels on every different difficulty by cheating if you wanted, but if you don't tackle the same puzzle in each different mode after you've solved it once, it should still be quite the challenge to complete all the game's puzzles. You can also go one-on-one with single cartridge download play to challenge another DS owner to a three-puzzle race to see who can finish them all first.

The most inevitable problem with such a game as Neves is that you're going to run into a repetition factor pretty early on, because as soon as you've played the first level you've pretty much experienced what you're going to be playing for the rest of your time with the game. It would've been nice and changed things up if they gave you seven different pieces each time, because then it would be harder to figure out just how they fit. As Neves is, though, you'll quickly learn little tricks of the trade to help you solve puzzles and see how everything fits together.

The game is very simple in terms of graphics, as we're just looking at plain shapes on a plain board. The audio is a little below average, mainly because the jazz that plays over everything gets annoying fast.

Despite the problematic controls, repetitive gameplay, and some rather simple graphics and audio, Neves is still a fun game at times, specifically when you game in short bursts instead of trying to tackle the game all at once. The gameplay is overall pretty relaxing, and after you've solved a puzzle after being stumped for a long time, you do feel a sense of accomplishment and that you've actually perhaps even got smarter in the process.

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