Hands On! Tangrams for Nintendo DS

Hands On! Tangrams is a Nintendo DS puzzle game that turns the old Chinese dissection puzzle into a stylus exercise, released in North America on 24 November 2009. The Storm City name appears as publisher in most records.

Overview

The idea is old and simple: seven flat pieces, five triangles, one square and one parallelogram, are laid out so that every piece is used, none overlaps another, and together they fill a given outline. The ESRB summary describes the finished shapes as animals, people and sea creatures, which come to life once solved. Pure Nintendo’s review adds that the solved puzzle fills the top screen with themed characters and objects.

Island Officials is the developer named by Wikipedia and by WorthPlaying. Wikipedia’s article is still a stub, and it lists the publisher as a red link, meaning no page exists for it. Publisher naming is therefore not settled: the ESRB and WorthPlaying write Storm City Entertainment, and most listings write Storm City Games.

How it plays

Everything happens on the touch screen. The player drags a piece with the stylus, rotates it with the L or R trigger and flips it with Up on the directional pad. Each puzzle has a timer, and finishing inside the limit earns coloured stars, with the conditions getting stricter further in. Pure Nintendo describes bronze, silver and gold stars and says gold is what drives repeat play.

Wikipedia states that there are more than 100 puzzles in ten themed groups, while WorthPlaying’s Brad Hilderbrand counts exactly 100, ten per theme. Jungle, space and farm are named in his review, and the rocket, the lion and a barn are among his examples. Pure Nintendo mentions park, deep sea, city and sports as well.

Hilderbrand also points out that the game keeps just one player profile, so everyone in a household shares the same solved and unsolved puzzles. Wikipedia lists multiplayer among the modes without detail.

Release and credits

All records agree on 24 November 2009 for North America; Wikipedia lists no other region. The ESRB rated it E for Everyone with no content descriptors. A DSiWare edition appeared later at 500 DSi Points, and Pure Nintendo’s review dated December 2013 noted that it first came out as a card years earlier.

Reception

Metacritic’s score, quoted by Wikipedia, is 68 out of 100 from five reviews, a mixed result. Dan Liebman of GameZone gave 7.5 out of 10 in November 2009, and Lee Meyer rated the download 6 out of 10 at Nintendo Life. WorthPlaying’s Hilderbrand scored it 7.8 out of 10 on 23 February 2010. He liked the fresh idea, the fit with the touch screen and the varied themes, but he found most puzzles too easy, some finished in ten to fifteen seconds, and he noticed that the repeated human figures look alike. He also called the graphics bargain basement and the music overly cheery, and he suggested buying it from the bargain bin.

Trevor Gould at Pure Nintendo reached a warmer verdict, describing a charming title that was still worth five dollars.

Can you still play it?

The cartridge is an ordinary DS card, so a DS, DS Lite, DSi or Nintendo 3DS in DS mode will run it. It is not marked as DSi-only, which keeps it free of region locking. The DSiWare edition is another matter, since it was a download and the 3DS and Wii U eShop closed on 27 March 2023.