Jason Rohrer, the developer behind memorable and experimental artistic games like Passage, Gravitation and Between, has released his latest title, Primrose. It's an unconventional—for Rohrer, anyway—puzzler, designed with the iPhone in mind.
The tile-placement gameplay is mostly straightforward, using a simple color-swapping, block-deleting rule set on a 7-by-7 grid. The author describes it best, noting the mechanics are "a small bit like Go and Othello (if either of those were one-player games), a small bit like Lights Out, and a big bit like nothing you've every played before."
Primrose is, like many of Rohrer's other games, a free download for Mac, Windows and GNU/Linux. It is not free, however, on the iPhone. Primrose is a $2.99 download on that platform.
Rohrer explained via e-mail why that is, "I guess it's like a luxury tax—if you've got an iPhone, you can afford the game, but if not, you can always play the free version on the other platforms." You know, I can get on board with that kind of thinking, despite how unfortunately linked I am now to my iPhone.
I've had a few hours to mess around with it and have enjoyed it so far. It certainly seems to have more replayability than some of Rohrer's previous experience games, something you should check out for yourself.