Transmission

Transmission is educational and fun. It might not be everyone's cup of tea since it is a puzzle game and lacks the excitement of a shooter or the immersiveness of an RPG but it's one of the best puzzle games on Kongregate. The game teaches you about different information networks and how information is distributed through different mediums. While the education is completely optional as you can just skip the reading, it definitely is interesting and can be useful when trying to solve some of the levels. This game has absolutely wonderful music that makes it enjoyable to play and is one of the few games where instead of playing my own music in the background, I'll mute that and listen to the actual music that is played by the game. The controls are extremely easy and intuitive as it is a mouse only game where you simply drag connections between the nodes to distribute information. The replayability of this game is low as the challenge of a puzzle is greatly reduced after it has already been solved. However, if replaying to get all possible stars then playing levels again can be a fun but sometimes frustrating challenge. Hack power for this game is nonexistent since as of right now there are no hacks for this game, but there really is no need for hacks because if you want the badges you can use badge hack and if you get stuck on a level there are plenty of walkthroughs for the game online. What I found particularly interesting about this game is that how levels where there are more than one possible star, all the requirements do not have to be met in a single attempt. When replayed you can attempt to achieve a different goal to obtain the stars you did not earn on your first attempt. The first level set is related to telegraphs, which are a very simple form of information network. After the first level set, you progress on to the telephone network which is slightly more advanced than a basic telegraph. Following this, the third level set is the computer network where the amount of information that needs to be distributed is increased and the complexity of connections between nodes increasing as well. Once you complete that level set, you move on to the broadcast network where taking advantage of broadcast stations to "create" more information becomes extremely important and necessary to complete levels. Moving on after this set of levels, you progress to the satellite network where the "color" of information becomes important as there are barriers that only certain types of information can travel through based on its color. The final new type of level set is the cellular network where there are barriers between each cell and there is a central node in each cell that can share information with all the other central nodes. The final level set called advanced combines all of these different networks of information and challenges you to think in increasingly more creative ways to finish each level. I would highly recommend this game for when you are bored, it's not action packed but it's a great way to pick your brain.