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There hasn't exactly been a wealth of puzzle games in the last few years. What was once a crowded genre has been devoid of memorable games in the midst of the 3D revolution. Enter Pandora's Box. Designed by the creator of Tetris, this is a collection of 10 highly polished puzzles spread out over 350 variations. In most of these, your object is to put a scrambled work of art or photograph back together. I won't detail all ten variations of puzzles here, but I will describe a couple of my favorites.

One of the first puzzles encountered is Focus Point, a jigsaw variant that could only exist on a computer. The puzzle picture is divided up into odd, different sized squares and then scrambled. What makes this more challenging than a regular jigsaw is that when scrambled, squares from one part of the puzzle end up stretched and distorted to fit the area in which they end up, distorting the image in ways that could never happen in the real world.

The Outer Layer puzzle is much like a 3D jigsaw puzzle. Imagine peeling the surface design from a vase, cutting it into squares, and then scrambling it. Your task is to place the pieces back on the vase in the correct positions. To make things easier, you can rotate the object in question through four angles. Yes, you have to unscramble what's on the back of the object as well as the front.

The other puzzle types follow similar themes, such as assembling 3D sculpture that has been sliced horizontally several times, or matching moving holes over a hidden image.

This game is addicting, one of the marks of a good puzzle game. I received Pandora's Box on a Friday morning and played religiously from Friday night through the weekend, until writing this review. Most of my breaks during this time came in the form of wife intervention. Attempts to resume my position in front of the monitor were met with resistance - I had to pry her away from the game so I could continue playing. Luckily the game keeps track of multiple players, so you can swap off with someone else in the household without fear of losing your current progress.

So what makes this game so entertaining?

As you progress through the difficulty levels, the complexity of the puzzles increases. For example, the Rotascope puzzle initially starts with three rings of puzzle pieces that need to be rotated around the central spindle and put in place. As you solve more puzzles, you will find more rings added to the puzzles.

The feel of each puzzle varies between puzzle types. For instance, the Rotascope encourages the discovery and use of certain "moves" in order to move pieces around the circle and inward or outward, much like solving a Rubik's Cube. The Overlap and Jesse's Strips puzzles both feel very much like a jigsaw puzzle, and encourage some of the same thought processes when solving them.

Along the way, you can earn Hints and Free Puzzles, which allow you to receive hints or even skip difficult puzzles later in the game. You don't have to play every puzzle that pops up, but this addition means that if you can handle the earlier puzzles you should never get completely stuck later in the game, as long as you save the bonuses for when they are really needed. For the record, I played through the entire quest without using a single Hint or Free Puzzle. It was difficult not to do so in the later stages when some of the puzzles were taking an hour or so to finish, but I wanted to see if it was possible.

There are also some interesting twists that show up when attempting to defeat the seven Tricksters. The puzzle types that you are familiar with can have.added dimensions. I won't say more for fear of spoiling the surprise.

Assuming you like the 10 styles of puzzles included, each one is infinitely replayable, much the same way that a Rubik's Cube doesn't go out of style. Lower level puzzles can be done in 5-10 minutes, and the harder ones can take up to an hour to complete, so there is good variety depending on how much time you want to spend. The easier puzzles make great pick-me-ups, much like a game of solitaire, and the more difficult puzzles have the complexity of a (real world) jigsaw puzzle.

For the completist, though, there are plenty of puzzles to solve after you finish the single player "quest" part of Pandora's Box. After finishing the quest, I had solved approximately 150 of the 350 puzzles - not even half of the total. There is a "puzzles only" option that keeps track of which puzzles have been solved, for those who wish to complete every puzzle in the game.

All control is by mouse, with some keyboard shortcuts for common actions, but the mouse control was so good that I never felt any desire to use the shortcuts. The user interface is intuitive and simple, and the brief tutorials make controlling the game almost effortless.

The interface and other game graphics are all top notch. The seven Tricksters are rendered very nicely, and the occasional cut scenes are quite well done.

The works of art that appear behind the puzzles come from Viewpoint Digital, creators and publishers of a huge library of 3D and photographic digital content. These images are either photographic or classical pieces of artwork. This gives a nice contrast between modern and contemporary imagery.

Some of the images suffer from JPEG artifacting, although it's nothing that detracts seriously from the game. It becomes more obvious, though, when looking at a beautiful photograph or a great work of art, and the sky is interrupted by bad dithering. This is a minor complaint, though, and again, does not impact playability.

The background music is pleasant without being overbearing, and each country visited on the map has a specific theme. The user interface has a number of helpful audio cues when moving puzzle pieces around, including appropriate sounds while making correct or incorrect guesses. The story line is relayed in full speech, and the narration is well done.

Installation was uneventful. There is a small installation that takes around 100mb and a large installation that basically copies the entire CD to the hard drive (although the CD is still required to run the game). I played with the small installation and found loading time and operation to be fine.

Just about anyone should be able to drop into a game of Pandora's Box and have fun. The early puzzles are simple enough for literally anyone to play, while the final puzzles are a true exercise in skill and patience. The Hints and Free Puzzle items mean that nobody should get stuck playing a particular puzzle type that they dislike, if used sparingly.

As far as puzzle games go, it is difficult to imagine what Pandora's Box could have done better. The puzzles are fun, the game is addictive, and there is ample opportunity for replayability. If you enjoy puzzle games at all, Pandora's Box should be in your collection.