Save the Princess – Pin Pull and Rescue

Treasure and Princesses Galore

People looking to pull pins and rescue princesses are in for a fun time with Save the Princess – Pin Pull and Rescue. This puzzle game developed by Super Rescue Team provides players with 150 levels of puzzles to solve.

Pull a Pin to Get a Win

Levels consist of players exploring floors of a tower by pulling pins away to let objects in the room fall to the ground. Players move this way too as their character, a valiant knight, goes wherever the pins take him. Players can only move the pins to affect the environment, creating the challenge of navigating through the pin-filled levels without dying.

The pin pulling focus of the gameplay allows for fun but simple puzzle solving. It’s easy to pull wildly at the pins and hope for the best results, which can lead to victory in early levels. As the levels progress, however, players need to pay attention to which pins they are pulling in what order. This creates a natural learning curve that allows players to pick up the basics of the pin-pulling while building on the difficulty. The speed and ease of pin-pulling also allows players to quickly try different puzzle combinations. The game creates a feeling of satisfaction when players pull the pins in the correct order and solve the puzzle.

Just Enough Difficulty

Each level has some variation of overcoming obstacles to win. There are three main tasks, with each level only focusing on one: save the princess, collect treasure, or defeat the enemies. Enemies may still appear in levels where the goal is to collect treasure or save the princess. The level always shows you what your objective to win is.

As the levels progress so does the difficulty. In one level, I had to combine water and lava to create new land for my knight without accidentally dropping him into the lava. Enemies are defeated by making sure your knight is armed with a sword before reaching them. Swords appear in levels where they are needed and let players slice through enemies and save the day. The levels work well as they provide a gradual rise in difficulty and let players feel satisfied when they solve the puzzle.

Easy to Navigate UI

The overall design for Save the Princess gives players easy access to the game and its features. The main menu is not overburdened with ads or too many buttons. Ads do not pop up too often during gameplay, normally only being shown after five levels in a set are complete. Players can also opt out of ads by paying a one-time fee of 99 cents. The screen never looks crowded or too chaotic even with ads still on. Super Rescue Team did a good job tastefully adding ads to the game without having them detract from players’ navigation of Save the Princess.

Three Strikes and You’re Out

The game’s Achilles’ heel comes is its three lives, which limit you in playing the game. If you lose a level three times, then you need to wait 15 minutes before being able to play again. This is not an insane amount of time to wait. However, the game does take the opportunity to tell players they can pay to skip past the waiting time by paying real money for unlimited life. The presentation of Save the Princess as a free game with these microtransactions laced throughout does bring the game down a bit. However, the fact that the payments are each one-time payments for unlimited use (no ads, unlimited life, etc.) makes me more willing to accept their presence in the game.

A Hidden Gem for Puzzle Solvers

Overall, Save the Princess is an excellent free puzzle-solving game for fans of puzzle games. Players get access to many puzzle levels for free with new content coming out on a weekly basis. Gameplay is satisfying and simple, letting any kind of player hop into it casually. Save the Princess’s one major flaw is the three lives limit holds back players from playing consecutively for long periods of time. But puzzle-genre gamers who can overlook that flaw, should pick this game up on the app store.