Thank you NowakGames for sending us this game to review!

World of Art: Learn with Jigsaw Puzzles is a puzzle game designed with the sole purposes of relaxation and discovery. The player will put together famous artworks piece by piece while listening to relaxing classical pieces, and learn about the artworks they’ve completed along the way. Almost everything is customizable, so they can change the colors to match their preference. Piece rotation is an optional feature which drastically increases the difficulty of the puzzle.

The soundtrack comes with seventeen songs, which can each be looped or shuffled. It is free to obtain and download on Steam. When I was trying to complete a puzzle, I often found myself lost in the sound of it as I worked. It reminded me of my great grandma’s house, with its tidy, decorated shelves and old architecture. The sound effects, on the other hand, consisted of one clicking noise that only took a few minutes to get very annoying. I ended up turning the sound effect volume down to zero as a result.

There are 348 puzzles in World of Art, and each one has a preview, covered by a lock. Puzzles have to be manually unlocked. Locks are received by completing puzzles, and the player can unlock any puzzle they wish. I counted down the rows, which have three puzzles each (on my screen, at least), and multiplied from there. Each one is unique in concept and execution, as well as time period, artist, and nationality as a result. All of those details about a piece's creation are listed underneath it, and the player can choose to take a quiz on the various pieces. Said quiz has nine questions, and the questions vary each time it is taken. Players can only try their hand at it three times a day, maximum.

There are also daily quests which are all variants of solving puzzles. They have three slots to solve the highest difficulty, two slots to solve the medium difficulty, and one slot to solve the easy difficulty. Completing these quests earns the player points, which have no clear purpose other than the leaderboard, which shows the top 1000 players. The puzzles can be searched for by artist, by painting title, or by time period.

There are a few different options for the user to choose when they go to solve a puzzle. The first option is the difficulty. The options are for 12 pieces, 48 pieces, and 300 pieces. There’s another option that increases difficulty as well, and that is the option to have the pieces randomly rotated. The mechanics for rotating a piece are to double-click on it, and they only go clockwise. Sometimes, I would try to rotate a piece, it wouldn’t work, and when I tried to rotate it again, it rotated two turns. This was an incredibly annoying bug.

It took me about three minutes to complete a 12 piece puzzle with piece rotation on, ten minutes to complete a 48 piece puzzle with piece rotation on, and 2 hours and 23 minutes to complete a 300 piece puzzle with piece rotation off. I turned piece rotation off for the 300 piece puzzle, because I know it would have taken me forever and a half to complete it otherwise. Piece rotation doubles the amount of points the user receives when a puzzle is completed, and point values are listed in the difficulty. Three stars reside above each painting, and one is filled for each difficulty the player completes.

When the right pieces are placed next to each other, they click into place and can’t be taken apart. However, I’ve learned that they only click together if they are the right orientation. Another thing I’ve noticed with the puzzle pieces is that sometimes the places where pieces connect to each other glitch through other pieces around or on top of them, leaving either said connector visible when a piece is covering it, or a piece with the connector covered by a piece below it.

As the user is completing a puzzle, they can choose what background the puzzle pieces are on. This can be done from anywhere in the game. When they decide to leave their incomplete puzzle, their progress is saved. While working, they have the option to zoom in and out of the space in order to get a better view of the art they are working on.

One would think that a game about solving jigsaw puzzles would be completely clean, but that is not necessarily the case. A small amount of paintings happen to feature scantily clad individuals, and a few even have fully naked people. A small number of others depict violent scenes.

Overall, World of Art: Learn with Jigsaw Puzzles has a nice concept, and an efficient way of carrying it out. However, the UI and controls could use some improvement, and I would recommend keeping the less safe for work paintings away from younger audiences. A game like this is perfect for people who immensely enjoy piecing together jigsaw puzzles, but it's not something I would personally enjoy. If you love puzzles, but don't want to spend $13, there is a free mobile version on Google Play that you can download and play.

- Kittycathead