match-three
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Fat Princess returns in match-three spinoff for mobile, Vita
The Fat Princess series has been overloading on real-time strategy-flavored sweets since its 2009 debut on the PlayStation Network, but Fat Princess: Piece of Cake adds a layer of match-three puzzler frosting to the metaphorical gameplay cake. IGN reports that Piece of Cake will be served on the Vita this fall, but a free, micro transaction-sprinkled mobile version is currently available on the Canadian App Store and Google Play. Conquering one of Piece of Cake's 55+ stages requires making intelligent matches on its match-three game board, which guides the actions of your party's Warrior, Ranger, Worker and Priest. Pieces are attributed to different skills: matching three hearts will have the Priest use healing magic, for example. All puzzle-based progress is translated into an above battle against the blue army in a scene that's reminiscent of the series' established gameplay. In a game featuring extensive portions, Piece of Cake's bonus feels fitting: the App Store and Google Play descriptions notes that after clearing level 15, players with a linked Facebook account will "earn access to a download of Fat Princess for your PS3 system at no additional cost." Assuming that amount of progress is feasible without purchasing power-ups or character upgrades, that's a pretty sweet deal. [Image: SCEA]
Daily iPhone App: Scurvy Scallywags is great fun for landlubbers or first mates
Ron Gilbert is the great game designer mind behind popular series like Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, and the recent Deathspank games. His latest project is called Scurvy Scallywags, and arrived on iOS last week. The game is great -- it's a match-3 title that makes use of some excellent RPG and combat mechanics. While it's not the most polished thing on the App Store, there's a whole lot of piratey fun to be had. Gilbert (and his fellow developers) are obviously big pirate fans -- you may remember the great shanty scene from Monkey Island -- and this game has no lack of nice piratey touches, including hats, faces, and clothing to unlock, ships to build through a crafting system, and a whole lot of great music. The main goal of your match three adventures is to re-discover a lost pirate shanty. Whenever you come across a new verse, the gang of scabby buccaneers will happily sing it for you. There's also a fun twist in moving your pirate around the board. Whenever you match pieces, new ones will come in from the direction that you moved to match. Your pirate and enemy pirates are all in tile spots on the board, which means that with some nimble matching, you can keep your pirate away from the bad guys until you're ready to throw down in each stage. Scurvy Scallywags is great fun. I do wish the game was a little more full-featured -- most of the pieces you'll be matching are actually meaningless garbage pieces, and it would have been nice to give those some kind of function. But otherwise, the design is great, and the game has an excellent "just one more stage" feeling to keep you playing for a long time. Scurvy Scallywags is available on the App Store now for just 99 cents.
The Alien Hive team shares tips and concepts from the game's development
Alien Hive arrived on the App Store a little while ago, and I wrote it up as a Daily App a little bit after that. Since then, however, it's stuck in my brain, and I find myself coming back to it again and again. The developer is based overseas and named Appxplore -- they're also the team behind two games called Sporos and Lightopus, great-looking puzzle games with plenty of polish. But neither of those titles has caught my fancy the way Alien Hive has -- there's something about the game's relatively slow, thoughtful mix of match-three, tile-based gameplay that has me interested, and constantly trying to make more and better moves to keep from running out of energy before a new high score. After I asked the team about the game's development, they kindly sent us some exclusive concept art to share with you. As you can see above, the game's various alien tiles have changed quite a bit as development went along -- each stage from left to right above is how the tiles level up as you match them. The bottom row above is the art they finally used in the game, and while I don't know if it's completely perfect (the second stage of evolution looks more to me like a lightbulb than a hatching embryo), you can see how it does accomplish the balance of making this look like the same growing creature, while also keeping each tile separately identifiable. The robot art here is very interesting as well. Robots in this game are kind of like Triple Town's bears, in that they block your gameplay and reduce your options until you can match them off of the board. These robots aren't evolved -- they're basically just different takes on the model, and you can tell that the last, final version of the bots (the biggest one in the picture above), is a bit cuter and more identifable than some of their other options. Personally, I like the bots in the bottom far left, though those might be harder to see on the game's busy screen. Finally, Appxplore shared some tips with me about their various strategies behind playing the game. The core concept of the title is to match items on the board using as few moves as possible, and you learn there are ways to do that as you play through the game. But the biggest key is to slide the whole board around rather than just moving a few tiles. If there's a match you can make across the board in just one move, it's much better to choose that than trying to manipulate a match closer to the open space that requires more moves. I've also found, in general, that matching the lower-ranked items first is usually a good technique -- it allows you to create more of the higher-level items, which you can then match and clear off of the board for good. Power-ups are obviously important too -- you can use the "Blaster" power-up to clear one item off of the board, and you should always use that one when you can create a match, not just to clear an annoying bot out of the way. The game's "Magic Fruit" powerup will match any two items instead of three, so you should always use that one when you're sure a match of two will lead you to an even higher-quality match of three, says Appxplore. Alien Hive's a great game -- I'm still not a big fan of the boost system that they've implemented, and I still haven't unlocked many of the game's higher creatures, which means I'm pretty convinced by now that it's impossible to do so without spending money on the game's in-app purchases. But other than that small wrinkle, I'm enjoying pushing these tiles around, trying to find patterns in Appxplore's great little character art. Alien Hive is free on the App Store for download right now.
Telltale releases free match-three Back to the Future puzzle game on Facebook
Telltale games has released a free Back to the Future game on Facebook called Blitz Through Time. It's a pretty straightforward Bejeweled Blitz ripoff, though of course it's skinned up with sounds and graphics from the classic movie series. Your goal is to match three or more same-colored gems in a row, pushing the in-game speedometer all the way up to 88 miles per hour, where you'll ... change the background to a different time and start matching gems again. Fun? Sure. New? Not really. But if you're a real BTTF fan, "liking" the game on the fan page will enter you in a contest for some related prizes. You can see a short trailer for the game after the break. Of course this is all promotion for the actual BTTF adventure game, which comes out sometime next month.
