MQT Puzzle Maker

There are quite a lot of different methods to kill time, even if just for a five minute break. With access to the Internet, you can watch videos or play various games right in your browser, but even offline activities can be fun. Applications like MQT Puzzle Maker are the proof, letting you transform images into challenging puzzles.

You're greeted by a simple and compact interface that aims to take you through two easy steps to generate puzzles. This automated process only takes as fast as you can pick a source and destination for the puzzle. On the other hand, there's the advanced method with a few different customization options displayed.

Going with the easy way requires you to use the built-in open dialog to select images under formats like JPG, BMP, PNG, PSD, TIF, GIF, ICO, CUR and ANI, which are pretty decent choices. The output is an EXE file for which you select destination. All that's left is to hit the “Make Puzzle” button to have it built with the path automatically brought up.

As mentioned above, there are also a few advanced settings to go through. Similar methods are used to pick source and destination, with the addition of an icon for the new file. Three difficulties levels are at your disposal, for which you can set number of columns and rows. Panel elements and title are amongst others that are up for editing.

The next step lets you configure visual display. Before moving to colors, you might want to increase horizontal and vertical speed, because the default values might get frustrating when playing the puzzle. Other options are dedicated to background, highlighting and panel colors.

Regardless of the method you pick, results are mostly the same. Only one type of puzzle can be generated, with custom number of rows and columns on three difficulty levels. What's frustrating, however, is the lack of at least a prompt for when you're done. The only thing you can do is bring up a preview of the original and save the instance for late on.

Taking everything into consideration, we can say that MQT Puzzle Maker is a fun way to pass a few minutes, and with the more pictures you have, the more time spent. However, the poor variety in output wears off shortly after trying on a few pictures, even if advanced methods trick you into thinking customization makes any difference.