IQ-Bubbles… yet another IQ-game with balls. This is probably the most straightforward IQ-puzzle I’ve created so far for SmartGames (although I think I said that already multiple times in the past). It’s a perfect example of a well known creative thinking technique: take an element from an existing product and change one property of it. In this case, I altered the size of half of the balls in the puzzle pieces. This change creates a grid that resembles a checkerboard pattern (of big and small balls instead of black and white squares).
By making this adjustment, the number of possible placements is reduced by 50%, as each part of a puzzle piece now fits into only half of the positions on the game board. I did something similar last year with IQ-Waves, but in that game, I used the orientation of the segments instead of their size. However, if you think that fewer possibilities make this puzzle easier, you’d be mistaken. During play testing, I found the challenges harder than expected. This is likely because, while I can visualize the shape of each puzzle piece in my head, remembering where the big and small balls are is much trickier. Often, I’d try to place a piece on the grid, only to discover that, while the shape fits, the sizes of the balls didn’t match. The development of IQ-Circle, which also uses puzzle pieces with varying ball sizes, may have sparked the idea to use a similar concept for this regular IQ-game. The name "IQ-Bubbles" was chosen because of the looks, and as a result, we decided to make the pieces translucent. Originally, I wanted the pieces to be completely transparent, with no color at all, so they’d look even more like bubbles or drops of water. However, my colleagues in sales suggested adding color, as they were concerned that a completely transparent version might make the game too difficult. They are probably right, although I still hope to make a fully transparent version one day because I think it would look very cool. The small air bubbles inside the plastic parts were included intentionally as part of the theme and name, so they’re not a design flaw. Likely because it was the quickest and simplest way to program them, my colleague Alain created challenges and solutions for this game that showed larger and smaller circles instead of the shape of complete puzzle pieces. I loved how it looked like real bubbles, but unfortunately, we couldn’t use this approach for the look of the final challenges. This design would make the game inaccessible to colorblind players, as they wouldn’t be able to distinguish the actual shapes of the puzzle pieces in the setup. As a result, this style was only used on the cover of the booklet. The look of packaging proved a big challenge. It was not easy to make pictures of translucent puzzle pieces on a transparent game board that do justice to how sparkling the product looks like under the right light conditions. We even tried a champagne version, because “bubbles” are often used as a synonym for sparkling alcoholic drinks. Anyway, this Grand Cru puzzle game is sure to bring a smile to your face — no hangover required!
Example of a JUNIOR challenge (left) and solution (right) of IQ-Bubbles
Rendering of how cool a completely transparent IQ-Bubbles could have looked.
Front cover of the final challenge booklet of IQ-Bubbles
GAME RULES IQ-BUBBLES
1) Choose a challenge from the challenge booklet. Place the puzzle pieces on the board as shown in the challenge. Each puzzle piece is made of a combination of big and small bubbles. Each size will only fit on half of the positions on the game board, creating a checkerboard pattern of big and small bubbles.
2) Place the remaining puzzle pieces on the game board. All pieces are double sided and either side can be used.
3) There is only one solution for each challenge, which can be found at the end of the challenge booklet.
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