When I was playing Splice, an indie puzzle game born on Steam and now brought to the iPad, I couldn't help but let the game reaffirm how much I love puzzles. And how much I appreciate elegant UI and subtle, soft music. It's probably one of my favorite things. So it stands to reason it should be on the most official list of favorite things I know of: Oprah's.

Splice is all these things. It's also a pretty complicated puzzle game.

You enter a micro-organism of sorts, and splice and mutate the microbes to form a cohesive part. Successfully pulling this off requires a certain level of understanding of the entire structure of the microbe, as well as the parts that form it.

Dragging stems of microbes off to be placed in empty placeholders grows to be increasingly difficult. You'll have to splice off legs of the micro-organism in a certain number of strokes to complete each level.

It's a simple game. It starts off easy enough, letting you learn the nature of how splicing works and when it doesn't. It's not fast-paced or actiony. It's calm and even soothing. I feel like I've given my brain a good work out by the end of a set of levels. And, really, we should all keep our brains active. So why not do so with an elegant video game?

Splice [$3.99, iTunes]