Color Fold: A Puzzle of Cloth Folding and Colors for Solo Puzzlers

Color Fold is a logic puzzle with a simple premise: can you fold the cloth in the perfect way so that only four specific squares can be seen?

The concept may be simple, but the solutions rarely are.

Gameplay

The game is played with a cloth of four-by-four colored squares. There are black lines separating the squares from each other and white lines that go across the cloth diagonally. The game comes with forty challenge cards, ranging from beginner to expert, and each challenge card shows four colored squares on one side and the solution to the puzzle on the other.

Your goal for the game is to fold the cloth along the lines shown on it (either the black and/or white lines) until the cloth is folded so that you see only the four colored squares shown on the challenge card. The squares do not have to be in the same order as shown on the card, and the rulebook states that all challenges can be completed in three to six folds.

Review

Color Fold is a tricky brain teaser of a puzzle that is likely to stump you in the later puzzles. Trying to solve the more difficult puzzles reminded me of attempting to tackle my Rubik's Cube. The result is challenging, sometimes frustrating, and extremely satisfactory when it finally clicks.

There is a nice range of difficulty in the puzzles, which serves both to teach you the basic strategies for folding the cloth and also ensuring it is suitable for a wide age range

The game is extremely portable. The box itself is small and since all you need out at any one time is one card and the cloth, it would be very easy to play on the go, while traveling, at restaurants, or even waiting in line somewhere.

Unlike Cat Crimes, which is another solo puzzle game from ThinkFun that we recently reviewed, Color Fold is not as adaptable for playing with one or two friends, and is much more strictly a solo experience. You could talk over possible solutions with a teammate, but you really want to be able to manipulate the cloth, and whoever doesn't have the cloth would be having a lot less fun.

If you enjoy brain teasers and are looking for something fun to play solo, Color Fold is a great fit. It is an engaging puzzle that takes up minimal space and great for puzzlers on the go.

Pros: Portable and challenging puzzle game

Cons: Single player only

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.