I have all of the Laruaville, Spellarium, and Cursed House games this developer makes and after 35 games total, am really pleased this game got a pretty big makeover with the new mechanics and graphics, because even with a unique M3-puzzle concept, you can only do the same thing so many times before it starts getting old. I keep telling myself that as often as these games come out now, that I'm going to just pick my preferred theme and play only that one if they're all going to be "more of the same". But LGT SIA never ceases to amaze me with their ideas for keeping games fresh, and this ended up being one of my favorite Laruaville games.
You have 100 M3-puzzle levels of needing to collect all the coins in the playfield to win, with a plethora of obstacles and widgets to use in order to get to all the coins. If you've played some of these games before, most of the gadgets will be familiar, but the new twists of having rising lantern pieces and powerups now only being generated on levels with powerup-making tiles brings in new challenges and makes this Laruaville a true puzzle game and not the walk in the park some of the earlier installments of the series were. I had heard elsewhere that the lanterns were a nightmare to code, but did not encounter many problems in most levels with them, although there were 1-2 levels in which I did have to restart before the lanterns wanted to cooperate - so kudos to the dev for doing a good job!
As usual, there are lots of minigames appearing in between levels (slider puzzles, HOS, spot the difference, and mahjong). I did come across a small bug in the level replay section where there are "phantom" numbers for the mahjong and slider puzzles and if you scroll the numbers too high, you can't play ANY of the sliders or mahjongs anymore on that player profile. There are a total of 20 slider puzzles, 15 mahjong games, 2 HOS, and 8 spot the difference scenes.
The playing tiles are almost completely new this time, and very fitting to the theme. I like that lanterns keep appearing even when you don't need them anymore for the puzzle, because the floating effect is lovely while you're otherwise matching playing tiles. The only small oversight I noticed was the "DRAC" letter tiles being kept from the previous Dracula-themed game. Oh, and the ghosts are outright funny this time...I couldn't wait to get another building made in the scene just to see what hilarity they'd give me next!
It's maybe not for those who just wanted a super easy game, but I played through a bout of COVID and major brain fog in limited moves mode and managed to finish all the content, although it did take longer than usual. Thanks devs for not being afraid to step outside of the box a little; it was worth it!
