The Snow Fable: Thriller of the Flame is a type of post-Puzzle Quest video games the place matching three colored gems causes every part to blow up, fancy mega-gems to cascade down, and a story to progress not directly. 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 needs to avoid wasting her creepy floating fireball good friend, which implies visiting the native sorcerer. However the sorcerer is one thing of a recluse, so the duty isn’t a straightforward one. She must get previous a magical gate, which ends up in a blocked passageway, a grumpy prepare dinner, a damaged fountain and so forth. Clearing these obstacles wants gadgets, and people gadgets can solely be unlocked with – and that is the place you could enable it some inventive licence – a match-three recreation 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 citadel, with a single twist on the finish to jazz every part up. We doubt Geralt would even have accepted it as a aspect quest.
However whereas it’s slight, it’s nonetheless welcome, and there’s at the least some Jim Henson-like grotesques to satisfy alongside the best way. We’re undecided in the event that they have been meant to be creepy, however the pals you make alongside the best way would have felt proper at house in Darkish Crystal or Labyrinth. Once more, it’s higher than brainlessly climbing a Sweet Crush ladder.
The story’s additionally a method for unlocking new power-ups within the puzzling. Every floating good friend that you simply achieve within the story could be referred to as on as soon as your energy meter has crammed up sufficiently. The fireball dude chooses three gems to blow up with napalm, whereas a water good friend washes the display, inflicting the gems to show principally blue. Tinkering with these allies is nice enjoyable, and you’ll quickly relaxation on a favorite. Except you’re chasing an achievement for utilizing one in all them fifty occasions.
The gem-matching begins off easy, with a number of the staples of the style current and proper. Initially, you’ll simply be matching particular colors to satisfy an goal. Maybe you’ll want thirty yellow gems earlier than the extent snaps shut. Then the standard ‘dropper’ gems flip up, and you could clear the gems under them in order that they hit the underside of the puzzle. Solely then will they disappear and add to your whole.
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 case you embrace a paint pot in a match – as they conveniently are available the identical colors – then they pop in a three-by-three grid of paint. That soaks into the parchment, and you’ll think about these squares as ‘performed’. Your job is to color your entire parchment, so that you quickly get good at nudging paint pots into corners after which smashing them with mega-gems.
Simply as profitable are huge bearded blocks (yeah, we all know it doesn’t sound correct) that want three flowers to open. These flowers are hooked up 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, they usually are likely to infuriate moderately than construct some pressure. Simply as you’re nearing a match, some pink eyes seem within the center and it’s important to look elsewhere.
However they’re fairly uncommon, and the puzzle eventualities are principally nice. The Snow Fable: Thriller of the Flame has stage substances that sprinkle on a little bit of spice too, as blocks could 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, they usually can bomb giant chunks of the play space, or take away all of 1 color.
What lets The Snow Fable: Thriller of the Flame down most, significantly as somebody who has performed a number of Jewel on the Xbox app to build up Microsoft Reward Factors, is that it’s too stop-start. In Jewel, you’ll be able to match gems even whereas the grid is within the midst of a series response. You’re by no means ready for the grid to catch up: you’ll be able to steal in and make some further matches. However in The Snow Fable: Thriller of the Flame, it’s important to wait, and that feels totally unmodern. Just about each match-three recreation 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’ll be able to. If you wish to faucet to activate after which faucet to swap, then you are able to do that too. And, in fact, you may make your match whereas different gems are exploding. However The Snow Fable: Thriller of the Flame is restrictive. You possibly can solely faucet to pick and faucet to maneuver, and the result’s that – a couple of dozen occasions per puzzle – we have been making an attempt to match three, just for the gem to not choose or swap for some motive. We by no means fairly felt like we have been in a stream.
However whereas The Snow Fable: Thriller of the Flame can really feel a bit like a stuffy match-three CD-ROM from PC’s early days – with all the awkward usability that comes with the comparability – it’s a fairly rattling good instance of 1. Each match comes with pyrotechnics, and when the smoke clears, you’ve bought a grid stuffed with mega-gems that may explode every part additional. Your power-up meter fills up, after which you’ll be able to 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 performed 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 have been within the temper for.
