[u]Recommendation[/u]: A pretty good match-3 game with a lot of levels, good music, and a few weird peccadilloes.
[u]Critique[/u]: Overall, I had fun with this game. The music - a quasi-traditional blend of woodwinds and strings that evokes a pastoral medieval European setting - is surprisingly well-done. The levels have a gradual increase in complexity that usually matches the difficulty: in general, earlier levels are simpler and easier, and the greater complexity in later levels increases the likelihood that you will have to use power-ups. I played on the highest difficulty settings (I didn't actually realize that there WERE difficulty settings until after I'd completed all 100 levels), in which each level must be completed in a set number of moves. This lent each level - particularly the later ones - a bit of a puzzle feeling, where you get a sense of satisfaction at having "figured out" how to win a level. This is an impressive trick, because Match-3 games are inherently so luck-based: your success in a level is so very dependent on the random tiles that drop after you remove tiles with a match. But the randomness is tempered by the tactical thinking that having a move limit and special tiles that "pop" in different, specific circumstances. You have to play differently with ice tiles than you do with lava tiles, for instance, and you have to decide whether to prioritize a particular part of the board (it worked best for me to always focus on the ice tiles). It's not a deep game, but it is pretty satisfying in small doses: I added the game to my daily routine, with the goal of playing one level a day. Each level takes ten minutes or less.
The game has a local scoreboard for each level that is pre-populated with made-up scores from imaginary players; you earn a medal for a level when you complete it with more points than the fake scores. For many levels, just managing to complete the level results in you earning the top score: it seems impossible to complete a level with scores as low as the others. So if you're interested a "earning a medal" for every level, there's very little repetition needed...if you can complete the levels. You will run into a few levels that you cannot complete just because you are unlucky with the random tiles that are dropping in. Play them again, and your luck will likely change.
There are two currencies in the game: gold and gems. Once a day, when you play the game, you get to pick a treasure chest: these chests contain power-ups or gems. In the levels, one of the earliest special tiles are gold tiles: you excavate the gold by completing a match adjacent to a gold tile, at which point 1 gold is added to your tally. If you complete the level, all the gold you excavated in that level is added to your treasury. You save up enough gold in your treasury, you get to pay for the construction of another building in the village. These buildings have absolutely no effect on gameplay (although there are a couple of building-related achievements), but you get a gem reward every time you construct a building. Gems are used to buy more power-ups. Power-ups are special items that you can use in a level to alter the board in some way: break a regular tile, break a special tile, rearrange all the tiles on the board, or destroy all regular tiles of a given type. There is no penalty or bonus for completing a level with or without using power-ups, so I used them only when absolutely necessary (usually when I was down to 3 moves or fewer and I knew there was no way to complete the level without them). The result is that I had hundreds of gems stockpiled by the end of the game.
Ostensibly, the game has a story: there is a poor settlement that is regularly attacked. The last attack hit them so hard that they will be utterly destroyed when the next attack comes. The residents ask you for help in building up the defenses of the settlement so that they have a chance of survival. The gold you earn in levels pays for the structures they need, but you're actually not involved in the conflict. The levels aren't part of the fight: they're just you excavating gold in order to pay for the buildings. The fighting all happens out of sight - you never even see the attackers (and a graphics bug prevents you from seeing the residents, too: they're all the same green as the grass, and are as invisible as if Bobbin Threadbare had cast a spell on them). As a result, the story has very little weight, even though two of the residents appear and give fully-voiced encouragement to you from time to time (and requests for new buildings, naturally). It feels like a missed opportunity. The buildings could have had unique benefits, so that you have to choose which buildings to buy: a cheaper building to get a lesser benefit now, or save up to get a more expensive building with a really good benefit. But maybe I'm saying that because I've played too much Machi Koro.
The game has a bunch of achievements, grouped in threes by increasing difficulty (for instance: collect 120 gold, collect 510 gold, collect 850 gold). Most of them are acquired just by playing through the game, but a few require some choices and/or skill, but sadly at least one of the achievements is entirely luck-based: combo master requires you to make a match, then have more matches result from the random tiles that drop afterward. This shouldn't rankle me so much - I play many card games, and so many of their achievements require such fantastic luck that it's very likely that I will never get them all (I'm looking at you, Ascension). But maybe it's annoying in this instance because all the other achievements are so easy to get, that it hurts to be so close to getting ALL the achievements. I dunno; all I know is that getting a cascade of 40 matches can't be forced in any way: it's all luck, and luck hasn't been with me.
