Clever games curator review: 6/10 A match-3 game where you shift columns up or down to create the matches. As such it’s barely recognizable as a member of the genre and feels quite novel. It also deviates in a lot of other ways, with a heavy emphasis on story between levels, and (unfortunately) almost zero difficulty because you basically can’t lose a level. Instead all you get is a 1-3 star rating depending on how “good” you did, with random movements often good enough for 1 star. I suppose the upside of this is that you’ll be guaranteed to be able to progress in the story if that’s what motivates you.

The other aspect that holds it back is a lack of polish and clarity; the game is constantly changing up the goals that you are supposed to be achieving (not just high score!) but it’s often hard to tell exactly what the new goals are and you never have any idea of whether or not you’ve done a 1-2 or 3 star performance until you have actually finished the level.

That said, the game delivers on the novelty side quite well, not just with the fresh match-3 mechanic, but also by constantly changing the goals between levels so that gameplay never feels rote. There are enough good ideas for several games here, I think. Plus, the storyline is fun and a surprisingly effective motivator to keep on playing.

In the end I strongly recommend this game (8/10) IF you don’t mind the ultra-casual “can’t lose” aspect, but give it a solid “meh” (5/10) if challenge is important to you.