1 Comment
Let’s be real: When you hear the term ‘Match 3’, your immediate reaction is probably an eye roll, followed by a groan and utterance of “another one?” and I wouldn’t blame you. One look at mobile game stores and you’ll find enough games from that genre to make a ladder long enough to reach Tatooine and still have enough to reach back here. But, what if I were to tell you there are some good match-3 games out there and what if I told you there’s one that mixes that genre with the dungeon crawling RPG genre? You might think I’m crazy, but it’s true! It’s called Roguematch: The Extraplanar Invasion and it’s, quite easily, one of the better, if not best, Match-3 games I’ve played since Bejeweled 3.
While this may look like a basic match-3 style game that you see on every mobile device, don’t be fooled. This is a fusion of Match-3 and a Dungeon Crawler with roguelike elements. As one of six intrepid heroes, you face various floors of a trapped castle as you hunt down the fabled book called the Nekonomicon. Thankfully, you won’t need to chop your hand off and attach a power tool to your arm to fight off the evil within. Instead, you use the powers of matching gems together, along with any item you come across during your journey, be it swords or wands. If you are even remotely familiar with the concept of a match 3, then you’ll know what to do here. If you aren’t, then the idea is as simple yet complex as something like Tetris but not as complex as Wetrix. In every room, you’ll see a bunch of gems, or mana as they’re called here, on the screen and you move either up, down, left, or right and try to match it with gems of the same type. While the main idea is to match three, higher matches get you special abilities to clear more gems. For example, if you match five gems in a row, you get a special star that, if you combine it with any gem in the surrounding area, clears out all the gems of that type. Likewise, if you combine two stars together, it’ll clear out the entire board and, possibly, damage and/or slay all the enemies as well. Yes, there is combat in the game and it’s equally as basic as you either damage enemies by making matches or bumping into them, the former is probably the best way to dispel enemies and the latter is only recommended if you are in a pinch. Every enemy has a gem or so they are weak to, but also gems they can heal from, so there’s a surprising bit of strategy here, something I have to commend the developers for including. They could’ve just made it so that all gems do the same damage to every enemy, so going the extra mile and including a Weak/Heal stat is a nice touch. Of course, you can also attack using the various weapons you find in the castle, like the aforementioned swords and wands, but I personally found that matching gems did the most damage to them and ended up using the hand-held weapons only as a last resort or if I just wanted to get through a room faster. I appreciate how you can’t really spam these special abilities infinitely and you need a supply of gems/mana to even use them, which is easy to restock as you get gems every time you match them. I’m not a fan of the items that drain your gems when not in use, to where it’ll damage you if you have no gems, but those items are clearly labeled and can easily be avoided.
I was also surprised with the wide selection of enemies in the game and how each one actually forces you to change up your tactics. While there are some enemies that won’t do anything until they are close to you, most of them actually have ranged attacks, like electrifying the floor, so you’ll have to keep on the move to avoid their attacks. While some of them are easily telegraphed by a red square prior to their move, a few, like those who have an electric move, as that one seemed to be random where it strikes, so that got just a little frustrating. I do like how the environment can help with either damaging or protecting you. For instance, if you are in mud, lightning won’t hurt you at all, so you can easily stay still for a while (I don’t recommend trying that in real-life, however). If you do end up dying, which may happen, you are sent out of the castle, losing every item you collected and have to start all over again. Frustrating, yes, but death isn’t a real factor in this game. If you do die, it’s mostly because you weren’t paying attention and not the RNG deciding to mess with you. As long as you are moving your character and making good choices with your gem matching, you can easily breeze through a run without breaking a sweat. In fact, the RNG, from what I was able to see, seems to really be in the players favor. There was one run I did where I was able to get one item that allowed me to spawn in the star power and every room from then on was a breeze to get through, including the many boss rooms. This isn’t really a complaint as I do like it when RNG works in the players favor, I was just surprised at how many times it did it in this game.
As mentioned earlier, there are three heroes to play as at the start, with three more to unlock for a total of six unique characters. You begin the game as the rabbit Feya, who has the ability to hop over multiple spaces which is a rather handy move, especially with enemies whose attacks can cover a wide area. After you clear the castle the first time, you get access to the Nekomancer Sonya, who has a ‘Shoot’ skillset that really comes in a pinch when dealing with enemies. I like how all of the characters have unique movesets tailored for them and I did enjoy playing with all of them as I traversed the castle and I enjoyed how you can mix and match their powers with other characters, in the chance you find an ability you prefer over the other. The NPCs you interact with, on the other side, I’m mixed on. The ants who run the store you visit in-between new floors and can draw you a map of the floor you’re on are nice and very helpful and I did enjoy their cheerful dialogue. It’s Jirou who I have the most problems with. He’s not a bad character as I do slightly understand why he is the way he is in the game. But, he comes off as too dull and too serious, not helped by the fact his character icon shows him with a blank expression all the time. It’s weird I compare it to another game, but his face reminded me of that one character from Omori. I actually began to dread seeing him whenever I failed a run as he would come on screen and just push your character outside and just walk away. I know it’s an odd thing to complain about, but it was the one thing that stood out the most about this character and it bugged me. Something else I want to mention and, your mileage may vary here, but I do like the simplistic voice acting. Instead of fully voice-acted dialogue, you get little Banjo-Kazooie-esque sounds to represent talking, which is something I really enjoy. I don’t mind quality voice acting in games but, sometimes, I want to hear some goofy dialogue instead of Patrick Stewart speaking of the closing days of the Third Era and this game delivers that in spades; Sonya’s little mews, for instance, are especially adorable and a bit giggle-inducing as, for whatever reason, my mind immediately wondered what the Meow Mix theme would sound like with her singing it. Funny enough, that brings me to the soundtrack itself and it’s another high point, with some nice music that has this Lord Of The Rings meets Banjo-Kazooie vibe going for it, along with a few tracks that reminded me of the underground levels of Yoshi’s Story (Fun game, by the way, you should check it out).
Really, I don’t have much in the way of actual complaints with the game, other than maybe the controls being just a bit off. You move your character with the directional pad and play the match-3 with the left thumbstick, moving the gems with either a button press or the right thumbstick. I did get used to the controls after a while but it did take a bit as muscle memory kicked in, resulting in wanting to move with the sticks and not the pad. I’m also not a huge fan of how, say, if your match-3 cursor is on one side of the screen and you decide to move your character, the cursor goes back to where you were and that tripped me up more times than not, resulting in some needless bits of frustration. Not enough to where I was getting angry, but just enough to give a sharp exhale whenever it happened. Also, the ‘speed up’ function, while a neat idea, I wouldn’t recommend using. It makes movement of your character slippery to where it was hard to even get to the door and I noticed some framerate drops when using it during the match-3 segments and when transitioning between rooms. Lastly, I said death isn’t a factor in this game, and I do mean that as this game really does feel too easy at times, with the only minor difficulty spikes coming in during some boss stages. A few bosses were easy to handle, and actually kinda cute to look at, but some took me multiple tries to slay thanks to their attack patterns. The Hydra, for instance, has an ice beam that can freeze spaces and gems, meaning damaging it is downright hard at times and you’ll quickly tire of hearing it charge up its beam attack. But, even then, the difficulty spike is only minor, hence why I feel this game is just a bit too easy. Even when the floor I was on had stage hazards like ice, fog, and sand, I never went “Oh, Crap, this is bad”, but more ‘Oh, OK.’ I’m not asking for it to be to the levels of, say, Dark Souls (although that actually would be hilarious to see a Dark Souls Match-3 Game) and it is nice to play a roguelike that isn’t super punishing (outside of losing all your gear whenever you die), I’m just mentioning this as I know some roguelike fans will be disappointed that it’s not a hard game.
I’m really starting to enjoy this trend of developers taking basic concepts, like match-3, and expanding them into unique and fun games. Roguematch: The Extraplanar Invasion, despite a few dirty spots, is a fun and unique take on the match-3 genre and an enjoyable dungeon crawler to boot. I found myself, at times, getting sucked in and just wanting to go ‘Just one more match’ multiple times as I ventured throughout the castle.
