Smart Bomb Preview

When the initial line-up of PSP launch titles was announced, people were surprised to see a mysterious entry from Eidos called "Smart Bomb -- Puzzle." Well folks, Smart Bomb is real and it isn't just some generic Japanese puzzler with an Americanized title. The game is being developed in-house by the company's Core Design studio, and should go on sale sometime this April.

According to Clint Nembhard, the game's producer, "Smart Bomb is all about high-pressure gameplay. The player's PSP becomes a bomb with over a hundred bomb deactivating puzzles to solve against the clock."

Each puzzle, or bomb, has multiple layers. The ultimate goal is to disable the bomb, and solve the puzzle, by going layer by layer until reaching and deactivating the detonator at the core. Every layer is setup with a different style of puzzle. For instance, one layer may challenge you to rotate mirrors until you've joined together a series of laser beams, whereas another layer could involve something as simple as laying down colored pipes in order to complete electrical pathways. One particularly complicated puzzle we saw involved placing gears and pulleys in such a way as to deposit a ball-bearing on the other side of the playing surface.

Plans call for the game to include a number of single player modes, including story, arcade, and challenge, along with a multiplayer mode that can support up to four-players in local play.

With regard to how the game looks, the best we can do is suggest you look at the screenshots we have (click the picture over on the right). The designers have gone out of their way to fashion each puzzle out of sharp, high-resolution graphics, and have made use of a number of snazzy visual FX.