Triple Town

Triple Town
Developer: Spry Fox LLC
Category:  Match 'Em Up
Released: Dec 2012
Usual Price:   £6.99
Hours Played: 2
Controller Compatible: No 
Rating: 0 Star

--------------------------------------------------

Although filed under a Match 'Em Up game, Triple Town plays out more like a kind of puzzle game - but a very aimless and bland luck-based one which ultimately ends up being a bit of a bore. It was originally an app but rather than livening up your PC, will more likely send you to sleep.

--------------------------------------------------

Menus, Progress & Stats

Triple Town is one of those annoying little games that forces you to play through tutorials before you have any idea what format or structure is involved. As it is, once said tutorials have been played, you are shown your hub; a screen consisting of a piece of land with 5 ships docked around its coast. There are inventory items on the right hand side - which you use to build your capital city along with a display showing the amount of money you have. You may click on the store to buy items while in the top left there is an icon which takes you to the options menu with the basic paths. 

--------------------------------------------------

Gameplay

With the blue ship taking you to the tutorials, the other four take you to four different areas where you play the game. One offers a standard game, another is on an island, one adds more bears while another, more user-friendly and casual ship, takes you to a play area with no bears or ninjas. In a nutshell, your cursor turns into various random objects which you then place on the play area. Match three adjoining items together and they merge into an object which is the next tiered object on the hierarchy. For example, three lumps of grass will turn into a bush, three bushes will turn into a tree, three trees will turn into a hut and so on and so forth

Each metamorphosis secures points which you receive in an effort to reach a target. A level ends when the area is totally filled and you cannot place any more objects. Other, less savoury objects appear as well, such as bears and ninjas - which you can trap and turn into gravestones. While the game has been praised for its strategic depth in some quarters, I found the experience to be dull, aimless and far too luck-based. Most of the time, as there are turn-based elements, I just found myself getting impatient and wanting to place the objects down as quickly as possible in order to move on. Furthermore, as there don't seem to be any punishments for bad play I didn't really bother trying.

Conclusion

As the game just seems to be about accumulating coins and building up some sort of settlement, which you will receive whether you're "good" at the game or not, I cannot see myself putting in any significant amount of time into this title. However this is not the only reason I give the game a double thumbs-down, as the aimless gameplay itself just left me cold. Indeed, far from detecting any sort of strategy (with objects to be placed being randomly generated) I felt myself randomly placing objects down willy-nilly and mechanically hoping for positive matches to spring up out of the blue!I did not like the restrictive aspect of the play area, the child-like Fisher Price graphics or the subtle ambient sound which all added up to making the experience wholly unsatisfying. 

This game was just not for me.