Last updated on December 8th, 2025 at 08:27 pm
SHI•RO – Puzzle Game Review
SHI•RO is a Puzzle/Adventure/Education game from the brothers grimm UG (haftungsbeschrankt), first launched in 9th September 2018.
It’s rated 9+ and currently has 215+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes SHI•RO Stand Out
Solve challenging puzzles on a beautiful Japanese lacquer box and engage with stories based in early Japan: In the beginning, so the Kojiki tells, sea was sky and sky was sea.
Journey towards calmness while rotating a lacquer box, puzzle by puzzle, word by word, further in time.
In SHI•RO you reconcile past and present with empress Gemmei, travel through dark forests to invite spirits to the shrine of old Yoshida, and climb Mount Inari with a fox.
PLAY AN ENGAGING STORY
SHI•RO tells the story of an ancient empress, a lost love and a blossoming friendship. Based on the first Japanese writing, the Kojiki, you engage with an emerging world.
SOLVE CHALLENGING PUZZLES
Over 60 handmade puzzles challenge you along the journey of empress Gemmei. Think out of the box while playing on a lacquer box! Will you help the empress to separate the sea from the sky?
ENJOY A BEAUTIFUL DESIGN
SHI•RO celebrates the beauty of Japanese lacquerware by transforming your device into a lacquer box. Gold and silver shimmer in your hands while you unriddle complex geometries and find stories of depth beyond the surface.
LISTEN TO THE SOUND OF JAPAN
By solving puzzles, you hear words of Japanese language, or as a native speaker of Japanese, learn words in English. Japanese Taiko drums will guide your way.
ENTER THE SHI•RO UNIVERSE
By purchasing SHI•RO, you get access to the complete first part, KURO. But more is in the making! Once we release the second part MIDORI and the third part AKA, you will be able to purchase them in-game and continue your journey.
This Puzzle game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, SHI•RO is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 9th May 2022
Recent improvements include:
Fixed links to external contents.
Download & Availability
SHI•RO is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
This is a relaxing game that can be played even a baby is sleeping in arms. The sounds are soothing. This is a great game for people who like a challenge. Awesome details in pictures and great way to learn history and new words. We hope they keep this game around for a long time.
Beautiful game. Unless we are mistaken… We couldnt find a way to reset the game to play again.
This game is very engaging with the sounds, visuals, and game play. However, Ive been wondering for a while how long until the other sections of the game will be finished and released. We think its been a year since the last update and we look forward to the next.
We love this app, although Ive been waiting for the new levels for over a year now. Please give us more.
We mean beautiful art and everything but severely lacking in the entertainment department. You guys need to change up the game play a bit.
A lovely relaxing game. No time limits, no in app purchase requests for more money. Cant wait for a next series of stories. Looking forward to seeing so many different stories of history from an amazing country.
The puzzles are deceptively simple and superimposed on a gorgeous background. We really like this app so far.
Fun game but really has very little content. We expected more from this, we know they are releasing more but this seems like the kinda game that should have daily Puzzles to solve once the story is beaten.
This game really tries hard: (1) beautiful graphics… Serious art drawings with shimmering gold that responds to movement (2) beautiful sounds… They sure sound like sampled percussion instruments (3) back story… Japanese lore (4) innovative play… Puzzles are creative with accompanying sounds (5) instructive… Japanese word spoken at each level The user interface is very clever but confused us at first because we thought we had to navigate to a state each time we played but the game remembers where you are as you scroll down to the next constellation. What is a little confusing is that you can flip through the constellations to the middle of the game (we think): (1) Id suggest that it be clearer that you are continuing where you left off when you restart the game. (2) You also should be able to go back one move and not have to start over. (3) Lastly, how do you reset the game and start over? Nice job.
The pros: beautiful graphics with delightful detail; fun to learn some Japanese vocabulary, music, and mythology; excellent production value. The cons: a (yawn) average puzzler that seems to exist independent of the story, a disappointing intrusion of Roman astronomy with Japanese theme (couldnt use Japanese star maps?). We found ourselves just skipping through the puzzles with the nicely graded hint system just to see how the story ends and the game visually concludes. We did not enjoy it enough to motivate us to buy a sequel.
Beautiful design, but rather dull gameplay.
We just dont see the point. Its not very creative and its definitely not a puzzle.
What is a newly initiated connection? It would be helpful to have that defined. We feel like Im just guessing. Nice visuals and interesting game otherwise.
We bought this based on it being identified in the store as one of the "Games We Love". Unfortunately, it feels crude and half finished. It is apparently so non-intuitive that practically every screen needs English directions. It has a great look, but parts don't actually seem to work. For example, at the beginning it tells you to turn the box by swiping, but there is no box; you're supposed to understand this to mean that the screen is one side of a box. On the screen called genzai, you're told that "you can drag from one moon to another if the other moon has equal or more drops" (told you it was verbose), but this isn't true, instead the game enforces a seemingly arbitrary move order. Wish we could get our money back.
This game is dope. Its perfect to pick up and play on the go and has an excellent difficulty curve. The later levels really make you think and feel good after finally figuring them out! The artwork is absolutely gorgeous and the story is really interesting as well. Highly recommend to anyone.
Beautiful art, to say the least. We are always intrigued by Japanese-themed games and we think that this game surpasses anything that Ive come across in the app store in that area. We barely started playing, but we look forward to delve deeper into the story. As far as gameplay, we would very much like to have a landscape-view option to play the game on an iPad. Otherwise, this looks like a gem of a game.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.2.1
- Size: 181.47 MB
- iOS: 10.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Mature/Suggestive Themes
- Developer: the brothers grimm UG (haftungsbeschrankt)
Last updated: 9th May 2022 | Genre: Puzzle, Adventure | Developer: the brothers grimm UG (haftungsbeschrankt)