Angels and Demons “Illuminati” iPhone App

Sony Pictures has released the “Illuminati” app for the iPhone. Illuminati is a puzzle application that doubles as a teaser for Sony Picture’s upcoming movie “Angels and Demons”, which will release on May 15th, 2009. The application has four different areas of play, corresponding to the four ambigrams in the movie: Earth, Air, Fire and Water.

The app provides two modes of play: Diamond mode and Element mode. In Element mode, you choose Earth, Air, Fire or Water and play just that puzzle. In Diamond mode, the elements are run back-to-back (just as the ambigrams are in the Illuminati Diamond… someone at Sony Pictures was paying attention to the details).

The Earth puzzle involves rotating the screen to use gravity to move the target object into place. Definitely a tough puzzle to start off with.



The Illuminati “Air” puzzle uses essentially the same graphics engine as the previous “Earth” puzzle, and again involves rotating the screen for movement.



The “Fire” puzzle is essentially the game of “Mastermind”, but with different levels of “fire” instead of the playing pieces in the classic game. If you are familiar with “Mastermind”, you’ll get this game right away. If not, you will probably struggle a bit.



Finally, the “Water” puzzle finishes off the game, and is arguably the best puzzle, and the most fun game play in the entire app. You really have to think in 3D to finish this one, and unlike the “Fire” level, there is no metaphor for this puzzle to draw from strategies you may have already learned. In our opinion, this is the best puzzle in the app by far.



Still, even with the fun that there was in the “Water” level, we feel that Sony could have done much better by incorporating something a little more interactive with the user, like the ability to create Angels and Demons style custom ambigrams directly within the application (a la iAmbigram).

Also, we found it rather interesting that while the four elements were present in the app as ambigrams (Earth, Air, Fire, Water), the Illuminati ambigram was actually nowhere to be found.

Overall, not a bad download, and you can’t beat the price: free.