Alive! Jigsaw 6.8

Yavsoft has been on the software market for more than a decade now. This Russia-based company specializes in developing family games and software. While other companies focus on coming up with violent, shoot’em up games, Yavsoft focuses on coming up with nonviolent games – like adventure, word and puzzle games.

One such game developed by Yavsoft is Alive! Jigsaw. This game is a virtual jigsaw puzzle. Here are the technical bits and pieces you need to know about Alive! Jigsaw. First of all you need to know that the download weighs in at some 4MB, so on a good internet connection it will complete in no time at all.

Once it has been downloaded, Alive! Jigsaw can be easily and swiftly installed. In this regard the application should work just fine with all versions of the Microsoft-developed Windows operating system. The installation is a simple one click process – just click "Next".

What can you do with Alive! Jigsaw once it has been installed on your computer? You can use it to come up with animated jigsaw puzzles. In brief, you can take a Flash movie, AVI, ASF, WMV, or MPEG clip and create a jigsaw puzzle.

If you like static puzzles instead, Alive! Jigsaw has got you covered. You can take one of your pictures and turn it into a jigsaw puzzle. The game provides support for JPG, GIF, BMP and other image formats.

The jigsaw creation possibilities do not stop here. Do you have a favorite website that you would like to turn into a jigsaw puzzle? With Alive! Jigsaw you can – the application can take HTML webpages and transform them into an amusing jigsaw puzzle.

There are a few bits and pieces that let this amusing game down. The user interface is not exactly user friendly, nor is it the prettiest thing in the world. Then there’s the very, very annoying nag screen. The first time you launch the application, an animation show ups and tells you to please register. And as if that wasn’t enough, a girl with an obvious Russian accent tells you to register please. And when you close the application, you see a nag screen yet again.

The process of selecting your own files to be turned into a jigsaw is a real pain. This is because Alive! Jigsaw doesn’t let you browse your PC. You have to copy the pics you want to use to the default folder.

Pros

• Turn images, videos, flash and HTML to jigsaw puzzles
• Up to 2500 puzzle pieces

Cons

• Nag screen
• Watermark on image
• Only three images are free for using

Alive! Jigsaw has been reviewed by George Norman on 20 Apr 2010. Based on the user interface, features and complexity, Findmysoft has rated Alive! Jigsaw 4 out of 5 stars, naming it Excellent