There wasn’t much of a drumroll or a sense of anticipation around Rainbow Billy: Curse of the Leviathan. When it arrived in September 2021, we hadn’t heard much about it at all, in fact. But that made our playthrough even sweeter, as we felt like we were unearthing a bright gem. Emerging from our time with it, we had questions about Rainbow Billy: Curse of the Leviathan, and ManaVoid, lovely people that they are, agreed to answer them for us. Many thanks to Christopher Chancey and Anthony Vaucheret-Rosabal for giving us the lowdown.
The match-3 genre isn’t quite as much of a draw as it once was back when Candy Crush sparked a global craze, but there are still plenty who enjoy a spot of tile matching and developers Panda Games Studio are looking to target them with their new game. Will Ancient Stories: Gods of Egypt be a perfect match and become your latest addiction, or should you instead be going elsewhere for your fix?
There's nothing new about a matching game. There's nowt to really write home about in regards a super colourful gem combiner either. But you know what, Ancient Stories: Gods of Egypt looks like it could well be worth your time.
Lost Grimoires 3 is extremely safe, keeping you on a short leash as you explore, giving you few items and fewer places to use them. And while it starts from a new place, giving you the rule of a city and chucking you into a siege, it backtracks quickly to its traditional formula of running after magical beings and their MacGuffins.
Puzzle games that try something new are pretty rare, so Indigo 7 gets some brownie points. But those points are mostly squandered by too much randomness, duff game modes, a vacuous story and a combo system that files away the fun. There’s a decent multiplayer puzzler tucked away in the corners of Indigo 7: Quest For Love, but this is mostly a failed experiment with only a few interesting findings.
Shadows of the Damned wouldn’t be made nowadays. But there is a lot that’s sad about that statement. By all accounts it went through development hell, as studios tried to contort it into western-friendly shapes, but it doesn’t really show in the final product. This is still deeply weird, and very, very Suda51.
Caves and Castles: Underworld is a limited game. It is lacking some pretty fundamental features. It never deviates from a simple gameplay loop. There are no optional goals or any real player choice over what to do next. Gamers looking for a challenge will be disappointed - you won’t find that here. What you will find though, is a brilliant casual experience.
We lost a significant proportion of our twenties playing Puzzle Quest on the Xbox 360. Yet, all it did was take an established game - in its case the match-3 puzzler - and bolt on all the trappings of an RPG: combat, a storyline, a world to travel through, and a sense of progression. Wise to how successful this has been for the various Puzzle Quests, HeroCraft, a Russian development studio, have looked to do the same, but this time with ‘marble-matching’ games like Sparkle Unleashed and Azkend 2. Marble Duel is out now on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.
From the moment I first caught a glimpse of Marble Duel, it brought back instant memories of games like Zuma and Sparkle Unleashed. This seemingly casual match-3 offering from developers HeroCraft has launched on mobiles and PC previously; now though, it’s ready to try and make its mark via the realm of Xbox. The question is, what tricks could Marble Duel hold up its sleeve to distinguish itself from the other, quite successful, marble based matching experiences?
