Say What You See: The Collection Review

If you were a particularly brainy kid, the kind who liked activity books full of puzzles, you probably solved your fair share of rebuses. Since those word and picture puzzles were likely replaced with Sudoku, crosswords, and cryptograms as you got older, it's probably been a while since you've had to sound out a puzzle to solve it.

Say What You See: The Collection aims to reintroduce older puzzle-solvers to the fun of rebuses. 99 cents buys you a "canvas" containing 50 odd images, which, when sounded out correctly, will reveal the name of a movie based on a book. Other canvases with categories like horror movies can be purchased inside the app for an additional dollar.

These images are as creepy as they are cryptic. The whole vibe of the Books to Film canvas is deeply unsettling, as if you had wandered into a serial killer's living room. We know that the lambs wearing the mouth gags stands for "Silence of the Lambs", but if we ever saw that in someone's house, we'd run away and call the cops.

This super-creepy aesthetic certainly hurts the game-- a fun, all-ages visual style would have probably been a better choice. Also, a lack of hints means you'll have to head online to find clues, and even after you download the game, you'll have to individually download each iCanvas. Better stock up before you take your iPod Touch out of Wi-Fi range.

Say What You See: The Collection will probably endear some puzzle masters and frustrate or unsettle others. A buck is a bit much for "just" 50 clever puzzles, plus a few bonus puzzles, so we'd hope that Say What You See switches to a freemium model. That way, at least players will know what they're getting into before paying up.