Tabus Nine Computing
Austin Mueller and I started a company earlier this summer, called Tabus Nine Computing. The focus of the company right now is writing Android apps, and we’ve been working through the summer to release our first one. It’s called Modulus, and it’s a math puzzle game.
The idea of the game is that in every puzzle, you’re given a starting number, and there’s a target number. The goal is to get your number to equal the target number, and this is done using the six buttons. Each button performs a different math operations on your number. The amount that the Add button adds to your number, or how much the Divide button divides it by, is called the value of the button. The six buttons are Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide, Modulus, and Exponent.
There are three difficulty modes: Easy, Medium, and Hard. In the Easy difficulty mode, the values of the buttons are displayed on the buttons. However, in Medium, they aren’t. So the values of the buttons are something you’ll have to figure out as you solve the puzzle. In the Hard difficulty mode, the buttons aren’t labeled at all. The positions of all the buttons are randomized, so you have to figure out which operation each button performs. To make sure you don’t have to keep all of the values and operations in your head, in the Medium and Hard difficulty modes, you can hold a button down to label it with the value or operation you think it is.
There are three game modes: Puzzle, Challenge, and Free Play. For each difficulty mode in the Puzzle and Challenge modes, there are twenty games, so 120 games total. In Puzzle mode, you just have to solve each puzzle. There are no limits on the number of moves you can make. In Challenge mode, there is a limit set on the number of moves you can make to solve each puzzle. Free Play mode generates random Medium difficulty puzzles, so you can keep playing indefinitely.
All in all, it’s a fun game. You need to think, and it stretches your mental math skills. We haven’t seen much else out there like it, so it’s a new experience, not just a new look put on an old game.
Ben Oztalay
