Happier Than You is an interesting puzzle game. The game is different from any other puzzle game I have played. The goal of the game is to make the faces happy. The game starts out fairly easy, but the difficulty can be changed by the user. Players can add more faces, more invention pieces or envy. All items make the game more challenging.

There are three faces in the beginning of the game and each face wants a specific invention. The inventions are made of three different types of circles. The circles are orange, green and blue. The faces want specific combinations of circles. Each time the player makes a match they gain happiness points. The goal is to get each face up to the allotted happiness points.

Happier Than You allows players to set the difficulty of the game and besides adding more faces, players can turn on Envy. Players can turn on envy for every face making the game that much harder. When one face envies another they want to get more points than that face. A small colored circle below the face lets the player know which face is envied. In other words, players have a red, green and blue face. A little circle below the red face is colored blue. This means the red face envies the blue face and if the blue face gets more happiness points than the red face, the red face will become envious and points will be deducted. Envy adds a whole new dimension to the game.

Balancing the happiness points and envy sounds like a hard enough task, but it doesn’t end there. Players have to balance money too. Players can have negative money, but get bonus points if they manage to make more money in a round than they spend. Players start the game with only so many circles and need to purchase more as the game progresses. The price of the circles is governed by supply and demand. The more faces that want that type of circle the higher the circle will cost. Players can sell circles for money too. The goal is to buy low and sell high, but it is not always easy to do that. The money system adds a new puzzle to balance, but at least players can have negative money without any penalty.

At the end of each round, players are given points. The points are given for things such as making more money than you spent, finishing the round with bonus time still left on the clock and many other things. Players want to gain as many points as possible because points move you to the next level. At the end of the points screen, players are told how many points they need to reach the next level.

Over all, Happier Than You is a unique and challenging puzzle game. It took a few rounds to get use to the game play and trying to balance all the different aspects of the game. Once I got the hang of it, the game became fun and had an addicting nature to it. I kept playing another round trying to make more money and keep more time on the clock. Basically, always trying to get better than I was last round. If you are looking for a different, but fun, puzzle game, check out Happier Than You.