The Snow Fable: Thriller of the Flame is a type of post-Puzzle Quest video games the place matching three colored gems causes all the things to blow up, fancy mega-gems to cascade down, and a story to progress in a roundabout way. And we’re all right here for it. As a lot as we love mindlessly matching three, generally we wish to combine it up with additional stuff.
In The Snow Fable: Thriller of the Flame, a younger lady desires to save lots of her creepy floating fireball good friend, which suggests visiting the native sorcerer. However the sorcerer is one thing of a recluse, so the duty isn’t a simple one. She must get previous a magical gate, which results in a blocked passageway, a grumpy cook dinner, a damaged fountain and so forth. Clearing these obstacles wants objects, and people objects can solely be unlocked with – and that is the place it’s essential enable it some creative licence – a match-three sport or two.
As a narrative goes, it’s skinny sufficient {that a} summer season breeze would blow it away. We’re not in Puzzle Quest territory right here: it’s just about the journey of a younger lady to a fort, with a single twist on the finish to jazz all the things up. We doubt Geralt would even have accepted it as a facet quest.
However whereas it’s slight, it’s nonetheless welcome, and there’s not less than some Jim Henson-like grotesques to fulfill alongside the way in which. We’re undecided in the event that they had been meant to be creepy, however the pals you make alongside the way in which would have felt proper at residence in Darkish Crystal or Labyrinth. Once more, it’s higher than brainlessly climbing a Sweet Crush ladder.
The story’s additionally a way for unlocking new power-ups within the puzzling. Every floating good friend that you simply acquire within the story may be referred to as on as soon as your energy meter has stuffed up sufficiently. The fireball dude chooses three gems to blow up with napalm, whereas a water good friend washes the display screen, inflicting the gems to show largely blue. Tinkering with these allies is sweet enjoyable, and you’ll quickly relaxation on a favorite. Until you’re chasing an achievement for utilizing one in all them fifty occasions.
The gem-matching begins off easy, with among the staples of the style current and proper. Initially, you’ll simply be matching particular colors to fulfill an goal. Maybe you’ll want thirty yellow gems earlier than the extent snaps shut. Then the normal ‘dropper’ gems flip up, and it’s essential clear the gems under them in order that they hit the underside of the puzzle. Solely then will they disappear and add to your complete.
However The Snow Fable: Thriller of the Flame has concepts, and tosses in some stuff that we haven’t seen earlier than. Our favorite is parchment which sits behind the wall of gems. In the event you embody a paint pot in a match – as they conveniently are available in the identical colors – then they pop in a three-by-three grid of paint. That soaks into the parchment, and you may contemplate these squares as ‘finished’. Your job is to color the complete parchment, so that you quickly get good at nudging paint pots into corners after which smashing them with mega-gems.
Simply as profitable are large bearded blocks (yeah, we all know it doesn’t sound correct) that want three flowers to open. These flowers are connected to particular blocks, so it’s a form of key and lock state of affairs. Clearing swathes of the beardy blocks in a single go causes gems to avalanche down, and so the chain response begins.
Sadly, there’s a spanner within the works. These are enemy ranges which scatter unmatchable beasties into your grid, and so they are likely to infuriate reasonably than construct some stress. Simply as you’re nearing a match, some purple eyes seem within the center and it’s a must to look elsewhere.
However they’re fairly uncommon, and the puzzle eventualities are largely nice. The Snow Fable: Thriller of the Flame has stage components that sprinkle on a little bit of spice too, as blocks may be locked behind bars which want one or two matches to take away, whereas mega-gems seem with 4 or 5 gems in a row, and so they can bomb massive chunks of the play space, or take away all of 1 color.
What lets The Snow Fable: Thriller of the Flame down most, notably as somebody who has performed numerous Jewel on the Xbox app to build up Microsoft Reward Factors, is that it’s too stop-start. In Jewel, you may match gems even whereas the grid is within the midst of a sequence response. You’re by no means ready for the grid to catch up: you may steal in and make some extra matches. However in The Snow Fable: Thriller of the Flame, it’s a must to wait, and that feels totally unmodern. Just about each match-three sport from the previous ten years has solved this drawback.
That clunkiness continues with the precise matching. We’re used to those video games being versatile: if you’d like drag a gem, then you may. If you wish to faucet to activate after which faucet to swap, then you are able to do that too. And, after all, you can also make your match whereas different gems are exploding. However The Snow Fable: Thriller of the Flame is restrictive. You’ll be able to solely faucet to pick out and faucet to maneuver, and the result’s that – a few dozen occasions per puzzle – we had been attempting to match three, just for the gem to not choose or swap for some purpose. We by no means fairly felt like we had been in a circulation.
However whereas The Snow Fable: Thriller of the Flame can really feel somewhat like a stuffy match-three CD-ROM from PC’s early days – with the entire awkward usability that comes with the comparability – it’s a reasonably rattling good instance of 1. Each match comes with pyrotechnics, and when the smoke clears, you’ve bought a grid filled with mega-gems that can explode all the things additional. Your power-up meter fills up, after which you may set off one more mushroom cloud.
The Snow Fable: Thriller of the Flame has the generosity of spirit to create a waterfall of matches, when all you’ve finished is matched three yellow gems in a line. And that’s its secret: it retains rewarding you for doing little or no certainly, and that was exactly what we had been within the temper for.
