Paintball is not just a squad-based shooting sport, it’s also an award-winning match-3 style game series developed by CrazySoft. The first two instalments have succeeded in delivering hours of enjoyment on the mobile scene, but now that it’s time to kick things up a notch. That’s right, the latest offering in the Paintball saga, and only entry to launch on the Xbox to date, Paintball 3 – Candy Match Factory is here to excite and engage its audience like never before.
Can Paintball 3 – Candy Match Factory entertain for hours with fresh match-3 ideas, or does the concept feel tired and in need of a spruce up?
Paintball 3 – Candy Match Factory introduces you to Boldy, a clumsy little green chap who runs a candy factory. He wears dungarees, seems to regularly end up in precarious situations and speaks gobbledygook. You could say Boldy is a bit similar to a Minion, which makes him quite endearing. Anyway, this factory has numerous faulty machines and your help is required to fix them throughout 91 levels of the main Adventure mode. Before delving too deep into the Adventure though, let’s get a grasp on the core gameplay.
You’re presented with a grid, surrounded by pipes, that’s full of different coloured candy balls. All you have at your disposal is a paint meter and a cursor that shows the current colour of paint as well as the upcoming colour. The aim is to splash paint onto balls, one at a time, in order to make a series of three or more of the same colour, earning points and more paint – if you run out, it’s over. Upon doing so, and as long as the row or column is near a pipe, it’ll be sucked away as a matching group and new balls subsequently fall to fill the gaps.
It’s very easy to understand the basic principles and put them into practice. Some might suspect that’s too simple of a concept to stretch out for 91 levels, but fear not because Paintball 3 has lots of tricks up its metaphorical sleeve.
The first of which is by bringing special balls into the mix that are unlike the regular candy ones. There are explosive balls that wipe out a small section, rainbow types that can be used in place of any other colour, electrically-charged spheres which eventually turn nearby balls into rainbows, and spinners to fill with paint for a random effect to be inflicted on the area around them. Damaged balls make an appearance too; their sole purpose is to cause a nuisance and block matches.
Even the objectives are varied, with some of the more straightforward levels imposing time and paint limits, before setting point targets or requiring a certain amount of matching sets. Collecting candy bearing letters to spell out a word is quite an interesting objective, but that’s just scratching the surface. Other ideas see Boldy in peril and specific criteria needs to be met to prevent serious injury; such criteria includes using pipes linked to the danger zone and matching colours that aid our strange friend.
Genuinely, I could write paragraph after paragraph on all the different mechanics regularly added along the way and the multitude of creative objectives accompanying them. The variety is unquestionable and is appreciated in staving off any potential boredom.
While Paintball 3 is not overly difficult, the combination of many of the ideas outlined above ensure proceedings get increasingly challenging. You’ll start planning a few moves ahead, especially when multiple grids are on the go at the same time and some pipes are temporarily shut off. So there’s definitely a tactical element to how you play and succeeding feels undoubtedly rewarding. Furthermore, stars are given depending on your performance, with a maximum three stars available, which provides a layer of replayability.
Outside of Adventure, the Quick Game option lets you go at it and accumulate points until you run out of paint. The draw here is setting high scores for the overall leaderboards, which could become an addictive pastime if you have a penchant for competitive play. And then finally, there’s Multiplayer, a local mode for up to four players to battle each other. Personally, I prefer going it alone, but it doesn’t hurt to have the opportunity to partake in some couch-based action.
In terms of visuals, Paintball 3 is bursting with colour. The environments, Boldy, and the all-important balls, are brilliantly vibrant. Kids are especially going to adore the art style, but more than that, it possesses an excellent selection of backing tracks. Puzzle games often have an irritatingly repetitive loop that grates on you, however a plethora of chilled music is present here and most of it is darn great. When the situation calls for it, more upbeat sounds are in place to increase the tension too.
Unfortunately, I do have a bit of criticism to share. On a couple of occasions, the game froze up and wouldn’t allow me to make any moves, while another time the level select screen stopped responding. Nothing much was lost, it’s just slightly irritating. It’s also tricky to navigate the cursor across multiple grids and is notably quite clunky in those levels where they are present. The last small issue I have is in regards to the cursor and how the purple and blue colours are easy to mistake for each other. Perhaps adding the candy pattern to the painting circle would help distinguish between the two.
Overall, Paintball 3 – Candy Match Factory conjures up creative and engaging match-3 gameplay that will hook you in for hours. CrazySoft have built onto a solid foundation by coming up with a load of ingenious mechanics and a wide range of objectives to tackle. It’s clever, without being convoluted, and there’s a lower difficulty setting which ensures the whole family can get involved and have a go. Sure, there are a handful of issues, but nothing that can detract from the pure joy of successfully helping Boldy.
It’s a no-brainer to grab Paintball 3 – Candy Match Factory and allow Boldy to sweeten up your gaming sessions with some match-3 goodness.
