I remember playing some jigsaw puzzles as a kid, often when on holiday to some wet part of the UK. You would spend hours trying to find the last dozen or so pieces you need to finish the puzzle before you give up the hunt knowing it is a waste of time. Thankfully for all you puzzlers a solution is at hand with Gaia 3D Puzzle. It is pretty much a jigsaw puzzle game that you can play on your PC, what is great is that you can use any picture on your hard drive as the picture for the puzzle.

I decided to use a screenshot from World of Goo, upon selecting which picture I wanted I was able to chose what size I wanted the puzzle to be. You can have anything from 12 pieces to 1938, imagine that, nearly 2000 puzzle pieces, and you will never lose one of them. Brilliance. Other options before you start playing allow you to change what shape the pieces are and whether you can rotate them, this all makes for a nice challenging game if you so wish.

Of course, once you start playing it is all very easy, simply click and drag the puzzle pieces into the place you think they should go. Once you match two pieces together a very satisfying ‘thunk’ sounds off and the pieces are nice and secure. While some might say that the charm in jigsaw puzzles lies in trying to force two pieces together, this is much simpler and less stressful, I would take this option any day.

I must make a brief mention of the fantastic camera, while it won’t be truly useful when trying to complete the puzzle you can zoom in and tilt the camera to get some great shots of the puzzle as you put it together. You also get some nice light reflection at different angles, it really makes for some nice images.

This game is not going to appeal to everyone, but it is great fun taking apart and putting back together some of those amazing screenshots you will take of games, and it will be very good when you have a nice photo which you just want to make into a jigsaw. I am not sure if $20 is the best price for this, but it will be money well spent for some people. A good game overall.

If you have you ever wondered what the beginnings of World of Goo were like then fret no more, 2D Boy have taken the time to show off what the early stages of development were like. In this first part of their childhood snapshots of the development process you can see what the game was like in August 2006 after a week of development. Really interesting stuff, you can even download a verision of the game at that stage of development if you so wish.

There was some big news recently in the Battlefield series when it was revealed that two new games in the series were coming to the PC in addition to the previously announced Battlefield Heroes.

However, many people were in uproar over the fact that no mention was made of a Battlefield 3, a true successor to Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield 2. Hope may be at hand though, in the latest issue of PC Gamer UK Patrick Liu (producer at DICE) was asked if Battlefield 3 was in the works. His response:

Ben Cousins, he did say we were working on five Battlefield titles. You do the math.

If that isn’t giving it away, I don’t know what is!

Update: After getting in touch with DICE for a comment I was simply directed to Battlefield.com and DICE.se for information on any upcoming projects. Needless to say neither site contains any information about this.