Thank you 70 Times 7 LLC for sending us this game to review!

I enjoyed building jigsaw puzzles with my kids when they were toddlers. Sadly, we haven’t played with them much as they grew older. That has now changed with Puzzle Showdown 4K. In this game you can build over 100 high resolution (3840x2160) jigsaw puzzles by yourself or alongside up to three other players locally. You can compete for the most pieces and highest score, or play cooperatively and share the remaining pieces. Besides the puzzle game modes, there is a showcase that can act as a screensaver for your computer or console.

The puzzles are broken down into various categories like animals, art, nature, people, skies, wacky, water, and so on. The pictures are gorgeous and I would love to use some of them as desktop wallpapers, though I am partial to my current one of blooming cherry blossom trees in Japan. There is also a decent amount of music variety as well which is categorized as acoustic, classical, and electronic. I enjoyed all of it and the sound effects are decent too.

Once the puzzle is selected you have to choose how many pieces you want it to be: 28, 60, 112, 252, or 510. While I never had the patience to build 500+ piece puzzles, I certainly have respect for those that do. Thankfully, you can save your progress and continue puzzles if needed. You only have one save spot for single player games so be careful not to overwrite a puzzle’s progress on accident!

By default, the pieces are in the correct position, but if you want an added challenge, you can have them rotated so they will only work if they’re aligned correctly. I like how the piece will highlight and cause the controller to rumble when it’s in the proper place.

When working with physical puzzles I usually focused on the border pieces first. It’s a bit more difficult to do that in this game since you only have a small pool of pieces to work with at a time. You can discard pieces by pressing the circle button if desired. If you press and hold down the square button, the image of the puzzle will show up to jog your memory. You can use a faded image as a background or an outline. The falling puzzle pieces in the background is a nice touch.

Puzzle Showdown 4K is a great game to play with family members of all ages. I enjoyed playing (and winning) several rounds against my youngest daughter. She kept wanting to re-match in hopes of beating me. Competition is great, but the cooperative mode is good too.

One of my biggest fears of putting a 500+ piece puzzle together is the likelihood of discovering that a piece or two is missing upon (near) completion. Thankfully, that is not a concern in Puzzle Showdown 4K. Just make sure nobody overwrites your single-player progress on accident! The asking price is a reasonable $9.99 and I highly recommend this game for any puzzle enthusiasts out there.