Enigma consists of approximately 2500 levels, known as ‘landscapes’, which may be played in any order. The player controls one or more marbles using the mouse, and interacts with the landscape purely through the marble. Levels fall into two broad categories: [|Oxyd landscapes] and [|Meditation landscapes]. Some levels may appear to fall into one category while actually being in the other.
Often in each level, apart from the introductory ones that introduce the game gradually to the player, each level either contains a puzzle, race or many hazards which the player must solve, win or avoid or risk making the level impossible to solve or risk having the marble sink, fall down an abyss, destroyed or crushed. This takes away one of the players lives shown in the form of spare marbles in the inventory. The level automatically restarts from the beginning when all lives are lost, with the Oxyd colours randomly shuffled again. Some levels even are/have mazes which the player must find his/her way through.
Scoring system
Enigma also contains a score system which tracks how fast the player finishes the level. When a level is completed, a "personal record" for the level is made. All levels have two records which the player can try to beat: PAR and World Record. PAR usually takes some quick doing to achieve and even changes with time in the newer versions and setting a new World Record is near impossible even for the dedicated player except through sheer luck. World Records are usually formed by groups of very dedicated players who have mastered moving the marble quickly but precisely and have known the ins and outs of each level. Score statistics are published every month at the official website of Enigma. The most important categories are World Record Statistics and Solved Level Statistics. Due to the large number of levels and the variety of challenges involved, achieving 100% level completion is no small task. According to in-game published statistics, as of December 2010 only one person has managed 100% level completion.
History
Since 2002, Oxyd is abandonware. That same year 2002 was the initial release of Enigma. In 2007, Enigma reached stable version 1.01. Current version is 1.21.
Development
The landscapes are generated by scripts in the Lua programming language, making the creation of complicated landscapes relatively easy. A level editor exists. Composer of the menu music 'Pentagonal Dreams' is Andrew 'Necros' Sega. Enigma does not currently support the popular cooperative two-player network games that were available with some versions of Oxyd. However, most of the two-player landscapes are playable in single-player.
Reception
Enigma has been praised in reviews as open source fan game and clone of Oxyd. Enigma was selected by Linux Format as "HotPick" in February 2007. It is included in many Linux distributions and is distributed over various freeware outlets. Enigma was downloaded alone over Sourceforge between 2011 and May 2017 over 110,000 times according to their download statistic, computerbild.de counted another 30,000 downloads. Also several video game magazine's cover disks included Enigma as part of Freeware and remake collections, for instance GameStar 06/2005.
