APP REVIEWS

Pigments

Pigments is a fun puzzler in which players must blend and clear as many dots as possible from a grid.

The dots — daubs, really — are rendered in the style of watercolor dots. Pulling a dot of one primary color onto a dot of another blends them into a new color.

Players can then clear dots of the secondary color by linking them together. (You can pick your palette from a few choices.)

Users can play against the clock, against another person (to whom you pass the phone) or in a completely opponent-free “Zen mode.”

Pigments manages to walk a fine line: It’s engaging and even competitive without feeling stressful.

Even though there’s a timer ticking away in the corner, the game doesn’t make you feel as if the world will end if you don’t set a record. In other words, it’s a good way to let your mind wander a bit.

On Apple and iOS devices.

Aqueducts

You’ve got to make the flow go in Aqueducts, a puzzle game that has you averting drought by figuring out how to get water from a lake to a city.

Players are presented with segments of an aqueduct, all jumbled, which they must rotate to make sure the water can get from point A to point B.

But there is a catch: Spinning massive sections of an aqueduct, as one may expect, isn’t easy. Players only have a limited number of moves before they fail.

Aqueducts is ad-supported, and they can be distracting at times. Users can pay to unlock all of the levels, if they don’t want to work through them on their own.

Overall, the game is beautifully illustrated and manages to be tricky without becoming infuriating.

Free, for Android and iOS devices. — Hayley Tsukayama, The Washington Post