Gems of Magic: Father's Day

gems of magic: father's day is the second game in the series, even though it's set in the real world and features a father-son duo, while the first one took place in a fantasy land inhabited by furballs. it was also among the worst match-3 titles I've played, which is true for graphium studio's other match-3 offerings as well, but ever the optimist, I decided to try this too. fourth time's the charm, right?

not when the game doesn't even start properly, had to switch languages back and forth for the english text to appear. and while there are separate sliders for music and sound, clicking the credits or info button in the options sometimes resets volumes to maximum. besides various language there's a game cursor and that's it, no windowed mode, alt+enter only makes a full size non-resizable window, so it's useless.

their second piratey match-3, which came out on the same day as this, was the first to finally introduce different game modes and do away with the mandatory move limit, and relax mode is available here as well when creating a new profile. it gets rid of move and time limits, which is my preference.

the story is... oh man... it's father's day, so the boys go camping without mom. dad manages to fall over a trunk, down the mountain, into the river, and the whole game is about his trek to the top, back to his son. fonts and speech bubbles look horrendous and I'm not sure why the same text has to appear twice on every screen in cutscenes, once inside the bubble and on the bottom as subtitles. and they must've been typed twice because one screen has a typo only in one instance of the same sentence.

anyway, 100 levels unlocked one by one, 3-star rating based on score, very few coins as reward, and various goals. reaching a number of points, removing sand, etc. sand is a really bad joke btw, there are tiles under it but you don't know what they are, so blind matching until something happens. and you also have to make sure dad reaches the top of the board on every level. it's the opposite of the well-known 'drop things on the bottom' mechanic I hate so much, and dad can't be swapped with other tiles. the level doesn't end once he's on top, you can continue matching towards the other goals, but no restart level button, have to go back to level select first.

the more you match of the same color, the better power-up is created, which then has to be swapped to trigger and it'll get rid of a bunch of tiles. combine two for an even bigger bang. coins are used to buy further helpers while playing a level. all 4 are unlocked from the start and cost the same, which is really weird. there are no tooltips and clicking them brings up the same ugly shop screen where you can buy 3, 5 or 10 for 5, 6 or 11 coins.

money is not exactly pouring in but I was sure I wouldn't finish this dumpster fire either, so I tried them out of curiosity, since the help section doesn't mention them. the compass adds extra moves, the finger switches any two tiles whether the result is a match or not, the wind whatever changes the color of a few tiles and the bomb is a bomb. it destroys one (1!) whole regular tile...

the board shuffles if there are no more matches, cascades also create power-ups, but can't match while animations are playing, always a big no-no, and already on level 3(!) there are spreading nuisances multiplying after every move. end of level animations of extra power-ups blowing up can't be skipped either, which I don't always mind, they can be fun or exciting. here they're neither, and it took almost a minute for level 1 to finally end after I completed it and I unlocked 11 of the 32 achievements as well. it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ridiculous. I don't care about achievements, but they're also buggy in all sorts of ways, e.g. the one for playing for 3 hours popped after an hour. it definitely felt like 3...

the game looks good enough if we disregard all the unbelievably ugly text, the acoustic music fits the outdoorsy theme and becomes irritating pretty fast, plus some power-up sounds are way louder than they should be. the usual lack of polish andabundance of bugs coupled with a relatively high price obviously means it's not recommended at all. however, even if they're all match-3 titles, I kind of admire how they don't just reskin the same thing and sell it over and over, like most casual (or non-casual) developers do. if only they had higher standards and/or better skills to produce something recommendable.

Match 3 + unique mechanic - buggy UI = Casual wilderness theme with 100 levels. Gain coins from getting stars and use them to buy power ups. More modern graphics compared to other match 3s.

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Match 3 is a very interesting genre of game because there are so many different ways they can be presented. At the very core of the games they all have a few values that hold true across the board of versions, but what sets the games apart is theme and puzzle design. In Gems of Magic Father’s Day, you will get a very light story that almost doesn’t even exist and is more so just an excuse to have the theme be what it is, which is fine.

Puzzle design in this title is, however where my problem with the game lays. From just a few puzzles into the game, I found myself incredibly frustrated with how the difficulty of the game was designed. As far as difficulty goes, I am all game but only if the difficulty is overcome by wit and execution. This game’s hard parts are not overcome by wit or planning but just dumb luck. Often during my puzzles I found myself with only one move on the board and the game just kept forcing me to do meaningless moves over and over again.

Of course to help somewhat remedy the getting stuck with no valuable moves, you do have the option to spend some coins you earn on power-ups. The power-ups have absolutely no description of what they do, so wasting valuable coin on just figuring them out was required. To spare you the suffering, I will just tell you that the bomb blows a single block up, the windmill re-rolls a 3x3 square of blocks to new blocks, the glove is 1 free move of two blocks and the compass gives you more moves to your moves total.

Coin in this match 3 is earned upon clearing a stage for the first time, and trust me when I say, you do not get much. Of course you do not want to have coin showered on you, but if the difficulty is going to be done in the way they do it, you should have better options.

And let us just talk about my largest problem with this title. One of the elements used to create difficulty is easily the worst design choice I have ever seen in a match 3, and it shows up a lot. There are blocks you are required to clear off the map and even sometimes hit these blocks multiple times. Within these particular blocks will actually be a piece you have to connect 3 or more to. “What’s the problem?” you may be asking. Well the problem here is the block is covered so you cannot see what the piece even is. The only way around this is to try to move that piece into an exposed space so you can see it before it moves back, unless you are unlucky and make a match, which can more often than not waste a precious move.

Don’t get me wrong, this title does have charm and yes a difficulty option between having infinite moves and limited, but, personally, I do not see much point in a game like this having infinite moves. Visually, there is lots to love and appreciate here along with the sounds and music. My fun was just quickly sucked dry with this match 3 with the difficulty methods.
Gems of Magic Father’s Day is a match 3 I just couldn’t recommend. It has some charm and if some problems are adjusted, this game could actually be really great. But, as it is currently, this one just feels more frustrating than fun.