To prepare yourself for winter, you can play with a snow block !

A new puzzle designer emerged and guess what he will puzzle you for some time!

His name: Philip Black

He designs and make 3D printed puzzles. But wait, these are not basic puzzles, these are sequencial discovery puzzles and are very cleverly made.

For this review I will speak about his Snow Block puzzle, which is a massive 915g of 3D printed elements, with a size of  175mm x 155mm x 75mm.

So yes it's a massive puzzle. Don't drop it on your feet!

 

Before seeing the puzzle you will have a look at a paper, in which some steps are written. And no, this is not the solution, but the steps to perform before playing with the puzzle in case things moved during the delivery, which is likely to happen. And then you can start playing with the puzzle.

 

At a first sight, the puzzles is well made, there are the letters "S" and "B", with also a play on words with "now lock". There is a "cross" hole, intriguing!

....and some arrow on some sides of the puzzle.... what I may be useful for? I know but I keep that for myself :)

As I mentioned to you, this is a SD puzzle, with many tools (and pretty weird ones!) that you will have to find and to use in a proper way.

No force is needed of any kind (so spining is not required nor useful) and no banging. This would damage the puzzle and won't be useful to solve the puzzle. You have to follow Philip's rules: no force and keep the puzzle flat on the table with the SB letter in front of you.

Personally I don't like to have to bang to solve a puzzle and so Philip's rules are perfectly fine for me :)

The puzzle is not straight forward and personally I did not find the tools in the proper order (as I should have), so at some point I was blocked and wonder what to do to make some progress. Trust me, there are several "ha-ah" moments in this puzzle journey !! The tools are used in a very clever way, no doubt the designer is a genius :)

And the puzzle makes sounds (no electronics inside though). Despite you cannot see the internals of the puzzle, you can still imagine a bit and find your way to make progress. And it's a rewarding puzzle: you get tools and you can see where they could be useful (that does not give you clues on how to precisely use them though).

I remained blocked for some time, then found a "tool" which teased me. I cannot reveal, because this was fun (for me) and telling you too much would spoil the fun as well. But it did not teased me for long and I finally solve the puzzle with a nice reward: a snowflake.

I love the puzzle. For me it embodies the perfect SD puzzle: good quality, tools and nice sequences of moves. The design is wonderful, Philip did a very very good job with this first puzzle.

Trust me, you won't be disappointed. I can only encourage you to buy it while it's possible (it's a limited edition puzzle) and trust me one more time, this will be on your top favourite puzzles in your collection.

That would be nice to have it made with metal, but I assume the price would be way too high and it would be super heavy, so I am very pleased with the current material used. It's not a fragile puzzle as long as you're not a brute (shall you be one, then you won't be a puzzle collector/player hahaha).

 

The conclusion in one word: Brilliant !

You can buy the puzzle on Philip's website: HERE