TUAW's Daily App: Crystal Soul
Crystal Soul is another puzzle/RPG mashup that features yet another take on mixing up the two genres. At its heart, the game is a new kind of puzzler, where you play as a character wandering a board of hexes. Every time you step into a hex with a monster (or a mana stone in it), you clear all of the monsters of the same color that are touching it. So, the basic goal is to wander the game board and clear out monsters as quickly as you can.
There are RPG elements, though -- you can play as a Swordsman, Ranger or Mage, and each class has its own spells that will help you clear the board by attacking in certain patterns or in special ways. The graphics, as you can see above, are cute and colorful, and there's a real hack-and-slash feel to the action, even though you're really only playing a tile puzzle game. In each of 20 stages, you need to accomplish a certain goal, or you can just play Survival mode and stay alive for as long as possible.
The game features full Game Center and OpenFeint integration, which is really nice, and the developers are actively updating it. As this post goes live, the game should still be US$0.99 as the result of a sale for Valentine's Day. Crystal Soul is an excellent title that's worth full price, but if you can pick it up for just a buck, you definitely should.
