A game of hangman can be an entertaining way to pass the time and there are plenty of hangman styled games to choose from in the Windows Phone Store. Mr. Potino is one of the more recent offerings and takes a rather unique approach to the game.
Your hangman is a puppet that moves and flows as you move your Windows Phone. The game has over 50,000 word puzzles and as you guess wrong on a letter, the puppet loses one of its body parts.
Mr. Potino has a certain amount of appeal but needs just a little fine-tuning.
The launch screen for Mr. Potino has options to start a game of hangman and visit the game’s menu. The menu options dangling from the top of the screen include viewing your gaming stats and visiting the game’s store where you can spend the star points you earn on new costumes for your puppet.
In launching a game, Mr. Potino has two levels of difficulty, easy and hard. You’ll need to have a little success with the easy difficulty before the hard difficulty will become unlocked.
Game play with Mr. Potino follows the traditional game of hangman. Tap on a letter that you believe will help complete the word. If you guess wrong, one of the puppet’s body parts will be cut loose and fall to the bottom of the screen. Miss more than six letters and your puppet will become a small pile of bones and the game ends.
Successfully guessing the word or failing will drop options from the top of the screen that will pull up the words’ definition or play another puzzle.
As you successfully guess a word, you’ll earn star points that can be used to buy outfits in the game’s store or use them for hits during game play. To use a hint, just tap on the blue star that is dangling next to the puppet.
While Mr. Potino doesn’t rise to the level of Trine’s Hangman, it does have a certain amount of appeal. The animated puppet is a nice touch but the fallen puppet parts can get in the way of the puzzle. You can move the fallen parts around the bottom of the screen but the puzzle needs to stand out a little more.
I also wouldn’t mind seeing the game transition to a new puzzle after each solved puzzle automatically without the need to choose “play again”. I think game flow would be smoother this way.
Regardless, Mr. Potino is an entertaining and challenging version of hangman. Mr. Potino is a free game available for Windows Phone 8 devices and you can pick up your copy here in the Windows Phone Store.
