I should start by saying that I'm not a fan of match three games - one of the very first mobile games that I ever installed on my first smartphone was a casino slots type RPG, it had the very thinnest pretense of a storyline, and looking back on it now, it was a cheaply made cashgrab with character art that was just good enough to grab my attention in the play store, and meant to exploit customers instead of creating and delivering a game made with care and a love for gaming. It soured me on match three games; which hasn't been much of a problem for the several years since I played that cashgrab, but I have heard that match three games with storylines are gradually replacing traditional JRPGs in places such as Japan, and it may only be a matter if time before such games flood the market here.
So, I went into this game with a negative bias against it - but I have to say that it quickly grew on me. The game is a side scrolling RPG with retro pixel graphics, and something about it reminds me of fantasy-based arcade games from the late eighties and early nineties - albeit with worse graphics than a lot of arcade games of that time period usually had. Instead of looking like Golden Axe, Breakers or Capcom's Dungeons and Dragon's arcade games, this one has more of an 8-bit look, albeit with a much better color palette.
The mechanics of the gameplay are pretty simple: you start with a panda warrior trying to protect a forest against goblins, and everything you do - whether it's attacking, healing, or collecting gold coins - is determined by how well you can do a Tetris/Dr. Mario style match 3 game. You gradually go through different stages with boss fights at the end, and your home base between stages is a tavern with a where you spend gold coins to buy better weapons and accessories, and with a blacksmith that can improve your gear.
The story here is very basic; that's probably the fault of it being a foreign made game, where the devs might not be great at English. It definitely has the feel of an old school arcade, NES or SNES games in this respect. I'm from that era, and the "kill enemies/go to town and buy equipment/repeat" regimen combined with the retro graphics gave me a sense of nostalgia.
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by this game. It is certainty very rough around the edges, but it is still in development, after all, and hopefully it will improve. I think that I'll come back to this game from time to time.
Thanks, I'm glad you think so. We will continue to do even better.
2023-06-22
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