A Year of Riddles review

What walks on four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three at night? This classic riddle can be found in this app. A Year of Riddles by Pyrosphere is an app for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPad. There are three hundred and sixty-five riddles to be solved. You can try to solve one each day or as many as you want. There are three hints to help you while the solution appears when you used up all of the hints. All of this costs points but you start off with some. There is a great variety of riddles. Most of the riddles will leave you scratching your head but some of them are memorable.

The riddles are not random but are specific to the current date. If you solve the riddle, the game will put up the next unsolved riddle. You can keep on playing or wait till the next day. This app keeps track of the riddles you’ve solved and shows your completion percentage for each month. The answer is a letter to eight letters long out of fifteen. You tap or move a letter to the space above. The letters can be sorted but is a bit annoying to do since it requires an empty letter box and is done manually. The number of points you have can be found on the top right corner. The required amount of hint points to use a hint is one, two, or three. The solution to the riddle costs four points. Hints and solutions are hidden until you need it when replaying the riddle. Solving a riddle will give two points. More points can be bought with real money.

The graphics for A Year of Riddles is simple. It is calendar oriented without the current year. This app is filled with simple shapes and colors. You will only see black, white, and shades of gray. Despite the simplicity, everything is polished and readable.
There is no audio for this app. Also, there is no iPod music support. In my opinion, this is fine since solving riddles is best done in a quiet setting.

A Year of Riddles is free on iTunes. By pressing the question mark on the top right of the game, you can purchase hint points. Seventy points for $0.99, one hundred and fifty for $1.99, and four hundred for $4.99. There are grammar and spelling mistakes but are not bad enough that you can’t solve a riddle. The riddles can be very challenging and sometimes the answers themselves will leave you scratching your head. If there is an update to this app, I hope it will have more riddles and maybe a way to include a riddle for leap year. I like the simplicity of this app and recommend it for people who like solving riddles.