7 Wonders 2 HD takes the fun puzzle game further than before, and this particular version is designed for the iPad only, but it takes full advantage of the tablet's screen real estate.

The game has a lot of visual appeal with game boards filled with a variety of tiles to match and detailed backgrounds to play on top of. An amusing detail during the gameplay is that a series of small workers walk back and forth under your game board. Their purpose is to collect the rubble that you rain down and bring them to the construction site. While it's amusing to see these guys react differently as you either produce a lot of rocks or slow down production, I did find that I rarely paid too much attention to them, since my eyes and focus were pretty much always on the tile-swapping portion of the screen. So, while it is an amusing detail that probably would have been completely lost on a smaller device, like an iPhone, it is something that didn't really seem to have an impact on the overall feel of the game. I guess anyone watching you play might find the time to see the little guys, but for the player, it is at most a distraction.

The game's audio features a nice selection of tile-breaking sound clips, trumpeting huzzahs when you complete levels and wonders, as well as a pretty steady background tune that more-or-less gets the job done. All that being said, I found myself listening to my own music on the iPad more times than not, so the game's built-in audio probably isn't compelling enough to keep most gamers listening, not if they have their own personal favorites on the iPad anyway.

7 Wonders 2 HD takes you to seven locations around the world (well, seven and one secret location), as you help workers build some of the world's biggest and most extraordinary monuments. While the first game actually touched on the traditional Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, this game takes players through a new batch of locations that are just as awe-inspiring, though I must confess that I hadn't heard of a couple of these before this game.

For the most part, 7 Wonders 2 HD doesn't change the core formula too much from the original. Players swap tiles in order to line up three or more like colored/shaped pieces. Doing so clears places on the board, and in general, once all of the locations have been cleared, you can move on to the next level.

The goal of each location is to collect enough building blocks to put together the wonder at that location. You earn building blocks a couple of ways. You can either match as many of an indicated type of tile, or you can cause specific types of blocks, usually corner stones or keystones to get to the bottom of the board and fall to the ground for your workers to pick up and use. Once you've cleared the board, you are taken to the wonder's screen and allowed to place your pieces on the construction site however you please. Sometimes, you will uncover powers ups that will affect your next game, and these include everything from faster workers to point bonuses to unlimited time.

Of course, you have your own power ups that you can unlock and use in the game. These will do everything from blow up every tile of a selected type to blow up all in a 3x3 grid or even create lighting that will destroy a large number of tiles. I personally found the power up that clears a full column to be especially handy in the later levels that had some of the more complex board designs.

7 Wonders 2 HD has you build Stonehenge, The Colosseum, the Taj Mahal, The Great Wall of China, The Moai Statues of Rapa-Nui, The Shwedagon Pagoda and the Angkor Wat of Cambodia, but that isn't all. Each location level has a color-coded location. If you match up the right tiles in that location, you are sent to a puzzle board where you must try to cause a piece of a map (or a star if you've already done the required pieces of maps for a location) to drop to the bottom of the screen. The catch is, you have a specific number of moves to do it in. As you collect these maps, a map of South America unfolds to reveal an eighth wonder to tackle. This would be Machu Picchu in Peru.

You might think that it is a bit hard to switch gears when the game pulls you into a more critical-thinking puzzle type of board while you are in the middle of the game's typical gameplay, but I often found these to be nice breaks from the time-crunch and pressure-filled typical levels. It really helped to break up the gameplay and keep it refreshing.

Like most good puzzle games, 7 Wonders 2 HD is deceptively simple, but does a great job of slowly turning up the heat in subtle ways to make the relatively simple job tougher to complete in the allotted time.

Put simply, you just have swap tiles in order to clear the square of rock. Unfortunately, the game slowly adds simple twists like making some squares made of a tougher rock and they have to be cleared twice. Other similar changes include making sure you get two cornerstones or keystones to the bottom of the board instead of just one. Even given all that though, the most devious detail 7 Wonders 2 HD does to make things harder is the layout of the gameboard itself. While early boards will be simple grids, or grids with one or two squares jutting out, before the end of the game, there will be locations that are all but impossible to clear in the designated time, and in these cases, I found that knowing when and how to use which of the power ups was the key to progressing.

7 Wonders 2 HD really does offer a lot of game time. Unfortunately, there really isn't any reason to return once you've put the last building block on the last wonder. Sure, you could go back and tackle any of the wonders again, or even just go into Free Play mode, but there isn't really a reward for doing so. As a result, I found I had little drive to return to the game once it was beaten.

7 Wonders 2 HD's core mechanic is as simple as any other tile-swapping game out there. Simply select the tile you want to swap and tap the tile you want to flip it with. Easy to pick up, quick to learn if you don't already know, and not very hard to execute.

Unfortunately, there are a few places where the game seems to bog down a bit and wants to throw a few too many objectives at you to really make you feel like you can truly accomplish everything in the time available for a level. Let's go back over the various tasks you can try to accomplish in a level.

1. Clear all of the squares of rock.
2. Clear as many of a specified type of tile in order to get as many blocks as possible.
3. Get one or more key or cornerstones to the bottom of the grid.
4. Match the color-coded tile in order to get to the puzzle level and earn a map piece.

The strategy I typically implement for these types of games is "tackle the hardest task first and see what is left when that is done." In this case, that might mean taking out the color-coded tile and by the time you finish, you might have taken out a third of the squares or even racked up a good number of the specified tile. The problem is, a lot of times, especially later in the game, one of the hardest tasks is actually clearing all of the squares, and if that's what you have to focus on, the likelihood of getting the other objectives completed is low.

Basically, while 7 Wonders, both the old and new one, is a solid puzzle game, this particular title tries to do a bit too much and there are times when the game can get a bit frustrating. I would say that it is still worth a look if you like this style of puzzle game. In general, you won't find your $2.99 wasted.