Lost in Reefs: Antarctic

I have played to previous match-3 of Rumbic and they were good ones, so what happened here ? Time or moves are limited. The number of powers too and it's impossible to buy new ones. They are granted when advancing in the levels (so they are extra rares). So... Buy this game only if you like to loose again and again until luck helps you. That's not my case.

Pros: -lots of hexagonal M3 boards interspersed with square boards -simple but challenging minigame puzzles with no hint button -soothing soundtrack -inexpensive game Cons: -limited moves/timed only -no Steam achievements or trading cards -extremely luck-based -have to buy all the powerups ---------------------- Very old-school M3. As in dated cartoonish graphics, no relaxed mode, no powerups for bigger matches. The one "newer" concession I did see is you can make moves all the time and don't have to wait for the tiles to settle before another move. I give this a "yes" mostly because the game has so many hexagonal boards mixed in with the typical square boards, which is something you don't see all the time, and there's simple, yet challenging puzzle quests every so often. You amass resources from playing and use said resources to build a town in between levels. Even if there was a relaxed mode, wouldn't recommend this for those who only want to play in relaxed because you'd be getting only a half a game, since the object is to complete the groups of boards in both limited moves and timed modes. So even though the game shows 218 crowns to win, actually only 109 unique levels since the game counts the different play modes as different "levels". Will say that having both modes worked into the game map does make it convenient for completionists to "do everything" in one run through. It may just be me, but the further along I went, it looked as if some of the layouts were repeating, only with more obstacles...perhaps not quite totally "new" levels if you play long enough? A huge detractor for me was how the powerups have to be bought and how many of the levels have so many chains or walls in the way you can't really play them without getting pretty lucky with the cascades. One of the in-game trophies is crazy hard to get because it is set up such that you must not use up all the freebie powerups given by the game (a rather paltry amount, by the way) until the trophy unlocks, which is almost halfway through the game map. The developer should have stuck with the usual mechanic of having powerups charge up somehow, as it is possible to completely run out of gems for buying powerups, which will either have you replaying the easy levels over and over until you build back up enough gems, or else leave you hopelessly stuck somewhere. I'm not typically a fan of too many "free bombs", but this game could have really benefited from getting some powerups from larger matches. Finishing the entire town scene is also pretty tough to do if you don't play the game in a very particular way. Surprising there are no Steam achievements or trading cards, as the game isn't tagged "Profile Features Limited". But if you want to see how M3s used to be done a very long time ago and don't mind if your games are hard, worth a look.