is a puzzle game for the

Game Boy The is an 8-bit fourth generation handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on April 21, 1989, in North America later the same year, and in Europe in late 1990. It was designed by the same ...

and was released in July 1990.

Gameplay

The game is essentially a series of 36

jigsaw puzzle A jigsaw puzzle is a tiling puzzle that requires the assembly of often irregularly shaped interlocking and mosaiced pieces, each of which typically has a portion of a picture. When assembled, the puzzle pieces produce a complete picture. In th ...

s with pentominos that must be assembled into a specific shape. The puzzles start off with rectangular shapes and simple solutions, but the puzzles quickly grow more complex, with odder shapes like a rocket ship, a gun, and even enlarged versions of some of the pentominoes themselves. Each level is timed, and once the timer is started it cannot be stopped until the level is finished. One starts off the game with only three pentomino pieces, and at the completion of each early level, a new piece is awarded to the player. At the final level, the player is given the 2x2 square O

tetromino A tetromino is a geometric shape composed of four squares, connected orthogonally (i.e. at the edges and not the corners). Tetrominoes, like dominoes and pentominoes, are a particular type of polyomino. The corresponding polycube, called a tetracu ...

and must complete an 8x8 square puzzle. After completing each level, the player was given a password to access that level at a later time. Each password was a common English four-letter word, so that by guessing common four-letter words, players could potentially access levels they had not actually reached by playing the game.

Development and ports

The name of the game was inspired by

Daedalus In Greek mythology, Daedalus (, ; Greek: Δαίδαλος; Latin: ''Daedalus''; Etruscan: ''Taitale'') was a skillful architect and craftsman, seen as a symbol of wisdom, knowledge and power. He is the father of Icarus, the uncle of Perdix, an ...

, the mythical character of Greek legend who created the

labyrinth In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth (, ) was an elaborate, confusing structure designed and built by the legendary artificer Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos. Its function was to hold the Minotaur, the monster eventually killed by the ...

. A faithful fan version was later coded for the

MSX MSX is a standardized home computer architecture, announced by Microsoft and ASCII Corporation on June 16, 1983. It was initially conceived by Microsoft as a product for the Eastern sector, and jointly marketed by Kazuhiko Nishi, then vice-p ...

computer system b
Karoshi Corporation
in 2006 for the game development contes
MSXdev'06
The game has been ported to different platforms, such as PC and GP2X.

References

*
''Daedalian Opus''
at GameFAQs 1990 video games Game Boy games GP2X games MSX games Puzzle video games Vic Tokai games Video games developed in Japan Windows games {{puzzle-videogame-stub