IndieFlux.com

Okay, okay, apologies if you don’t find match-3 puzzle games awesome.  I just had to put that in the title though because the title is a face full of awesome!  I could have said a fist full of awesome, but a face full seems more in your face, you know because it has face in the title.  Anyway.  Our next review is for said match-3 puzzle on Xbox Live Indie Games game called Kaotik Puzzle from Spanish developer Silvermax (That’s Spanish as in Spain, not the language, although they speak the language in Spain because it’s… well you get the idea).  Anyways if you were to play one match-three or puzzle game in your whole life time, this would be it.  The guy has pulled out all the stops!  Here’s a vid showing you what it’s all about.  I believe it’s probably the same vid that I posted in the preview, but here’s a refresher. 

Also even though it says it’s coming soon, it’s out now, at the Xbox Live Marketplace.  I really dig this game so that might be all you need to know, however if you want to know why please read after the jump.

Okay let’s go through the boring preliminaries.  Da da dah graphics, blah blah blah, sound, music.  Okay done.  Alright not quite.  Graphics are probably the best you will see for this type of game from an indie developer short of theming the whole game.  There are plenty of sparkly, fadey, stretchy, spinny, color changing effects.  It’s a slick as a bullet through slime.  Okay I’m not trying to say the graphics are the greatest, they’re nicely polished for what they are.  Everything is clearly presented and there is enough oomph to reward you visually (or anti-reward you if you’re not good enough).  The music is fairly repetitive but you probably won’t notice that if you get addicted to playing it like I did.  However it’s not particularly annoying.  The sounds are also ok.  The whole package is well presented.  I did see something about custom tracks, and although I’ve not gotten around to using that option.

Okay so how to play, well the are a few more instructions than your standard puzzler.  You have different types of cursors that do different things.  One may swap up and down and left and right, one might rotate them around, another pushes blocks off one side of the playfield and puts them on the other side.  Your goal is of course to match three or more blocks of the same color.  However if you notice in the upper and lower parts of the screen there are particular block configurations.  Now you can simply remove blocks by 3 or more, or you can do that exact configuration to get bombs and things to rain down on your opponent. 

The actual controls are fairly simple, however.  Move with the left analog or d-pad, rotate with the four buttons.  There are a bunch of different characters to choose from each with their own block configuration.  There are three modes, where each can have a different character, one where your character has to match them, or their character has to match you.  There are also five difficulty levels, Very Easy, Easy, Normal Hard, and Extreme.  You can also customize your game by choosing different cursors, characters, and so forth, that I’ve also not gotten to.  There is also multiplayer either over lan, xbox live, or just on the same machine.

If you have never played any match-three before for some strange, inexplicable reason, then this is the game to start playing them on.  It’s got a little bit of everything, Tetris, Bejeweled, and whatnot.  If you just want to relax, go with very easy, (and use any other cursor than that straight row one where the blocks go off one side of the playfield and onto another, that coupled with Extreme difficulty is practically unbeatable), if you want a challenge go up to Extreme.

I would just recommend you go get the trial and then see if you don’t want to buy the thing.  (I also recommend though, that you choose medium, hard, and extreme skill levels with the trial, because you may become bored with very easy, and we don’t want you to become bored, we want you to become payi…er…er happy customer… er players, yes we want you to become happy players so you will stay happy and be happy.)

Name: Kaotik Puzzle

Developer: Silvermax Studio

Platform: Xbox 360 (Xbox Live Indie Games)

Price: 240 MSP ($3.00 US, I mean come on who doesn’t have 3 bucks?)

Where you can get it:  Xbox Live Marketplace.

Tags: Casual, game, Indie Flux, Kaotik Puzzle, Match-3, Puzzle, review, Silvermax, Uhfgood

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 11:30 pm and is filed under Casual, Match-3, Puzzle, xblig. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.