TaniNani, a cute level flipping puzzle game, is out later this month

I originally stumbled upon TaniNani on the TIGSource forums back in October when developer Kevin Andersson first posted it. At the time, I'd vowed to be more active in the forums—which has not panned out—but fortunately Andersson is more diligent than I am and finishes what he starts. When I happened upon TaniNani again today it was to find out that it's releasing on January 23rd.

I'm always astounded what a good gif can do to stop me in my browsing tracks. Watching the pixelated tiles of TaniNani's level swap to bring the two little blob creatures together nearly mesmerized me. The way the tiles break apart, swap, and then bunch back up together is snappy and satisfying.

On each level there is a crystal and multiple little blob creatures rolling along their respective tiles. You'll swap two tiles at a time to change the path of the blobs so that they can pick up the gem and then reunite with one another.

When I first found TaniNani, Andersson had already planned out lots of additional puzzle opportunities for TaniNani. Some levels have keys to obtain. Some are powered. Some are locked in place and cannot be moved. It's such a neat, clean little idea and I am a big fan of simple but effective puzzle designs.

TaniNani will have 120 individually-created levels when it launches later this month, each with special extra objectives. After seeing that Andersson also went to the trouble of making a visual level editor, my next hope is that he lets us players fool around with building our own puzzles.

You can wishlist TaniNani on Steam before it comes out on January 23rd.