Gems of Destiny: Homeless Dwarf

gems of destiny: homeless dwarf is the 5th match-3 game I played from graphium studios. all previous ones were extremely buggy and full of issues still unresolved, yet I keep giving them another shot, because unlike most casual developers, they don't just keep reskinning their first game every few months. unfortunately, they don't really learn from their mistakes and feedback either, but this game is finally just about recommendable.

100 levels unlocked one after the other. I finished the story after 70-odd but could continue playing the rest of the stages, though I decided not to. 3 game modes, the same ones as in match three pirates 2: relaxed has no move limit, skulls or pests, normal has pests but no skulls or move limit, and hard has everything. difficulty can't be changed later and replaying previous levels is not possible either.

there are in-game instructions, but it's the usual matching gameplay, 3 of the same is good, more is even better. gotta match tiles resulting of 3+ matches to the same gem color or each other to clear full lines and stuff. goals include matching a certain number of a certain color and removing ice or other special blocks.

skulls (or 'dark magic stones') are spreading annoyances, gotta bomb them or match adjacent tiles. pests aren't mentioned in the instructions, so maybe the difficulty screen was a copy-paste job, or maybe the various trees are considered that. they don't show any pest-like behavior though.

booster selection comes up before every level, you can choose up to 3. they add bombs to the board, remove random tiles, shuffle the board, add an extra move and increase point values for a while. you have to unlock them first, which the tutorial before level 1 fails to communicate, but it's common practice. they're free after that but can only be used once per level, though you can put the same thing into multiple slots. tornado is buggy, it removes way more than 3 tiles, practically winning most levels in one move.

unlocking stuff happens by spending points on all sorts of structures. the ones that don't provide a booster are only cosmetic but necessary for story progress. mouse wheel works on the build screen but it barely does anything. not much need to scroll though, as not every building is available to build immediately.

graphium's trademarked instant matching thing is also back, so there are no matching animations. now I'm all for not wasting time, but always find this really underwhelming in their games for some reason. good thing though, because matches can't be made while the current one is happening. and at the same time booster animations aren't instant and seem even slower in comparison. cascades/combos work at least but no toggle for the almost instant and constant matching hints, always annoying. the board auto-shuffles if there are no valid moves.

the presentation is fine. the usual casual-pretty graphics and forgettable but not annoying audio. settings only include a bunch of languages and separate volume sliders for music and sound. the english text is horrible and full of tapping and missing punctuation and capitalization. no windowed mode toggle, alt+enter only produces a non-resizable window, and settings aren't available while playing a level or even on the map, only in the main menu. audio settings are also buggy, turning music down didn't work while the brief outro was playing.

while still unpolished and full price is absolutely crazy, if you can catch it on deep sale, it's one way to spend some time, as it's not completely broken, like their previous attempts. don't expect any challenge whatsoever on normal though, especially with the buggy tornado that you can just choose not to use.

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Gems of Destiny is a match-three puzzle game that follows the adventures of a dwarf named Axel, who sets out from his homeland to discover the world. During his journey, his stumbles upon a forest that has been destroyed by goblins. We are then introduced to Willow, a dryad of the forest that survived the attack. Together they team up and rebuild the land using Axel's dwarven ingenuity and skills. 

I absolutely love match-three puzzles, I've played some Bejeweled in my time, some Candy Crush, but what brought me to love match-three games is Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords. I won't compare games, so I will talk solely about Gems of Destiny: Homeless Dwarf. 

Gems of Destiny attempts to bring a lot to the table but ultimately fails. The only two attractions that allure you into playing it are the story and the gameplay. At the end of the day, at the time of me writing this, both seem good at first, but once you've put some time into it, you realise there is less and less content. I've put in 2 hours playing this game, and I've completed it. The price of the game, the time spent playing, and the amount of content that it provides is not worth it in my opinion (keeping in mind I personally received a free review copy, but the fact still stands), especially when there are so many games in the match-three genre to choose from.

Firstly, the gameplay and its flaws. It's the standard match-three you know and love, the objectives include: 

collecting a certain number of y-colored gems, clearing webbed/frozen board blocks, clearing crystals by matching adjacent gems three times, and clearing trees by matching adjacent gems two to three times. You match 4 and you get a line clear gem of the same colour gem, you match 5 and you get a special gem that can pick an adjacent gem and all gems of that selected gem get cleared. you match 5 in an L shape and you get a bomb clear gem of the same colour. 

The problem and flaw in the game, is the fact that if the objective is to clear x amount of webbed or frozen blocks, you can literally use a certain booster (won't say which one) which clears ALL of the webbed or frozen blocks and it immediately clears the level. Sometimes there are two objectives, but you can make it one with this simple trick. This removes the challenge in the game, makes certain levels redundant, and overall makes the game simply too easy. Even when I was not using this trick, the game did not feel challenging enough, and it did not fully satisfy the match-three itch I had. There was also a visual error where sometimes I cleared gems but one gem doesn't go away and it overlapped with the new gem that takes its spot. There is also no way to remove the hints that assist you in matching. Another thing I noticed is that if you are stuck, the algorithm somehow spawns gems to eventually get you unstuck, effectively making sure you don't fail the mission unless you purposely expend too many moves.

Secondly, the story, I appreciate the story and the fact that it even has one. It is simple and easy to understand. But the amount of effort in the world building is weak and in the end, I did not care for the cause of rebuilding the land. It was simply do a level, get points, rebuild a building, run out of points, do another level until I can afford the next building, rinse and repeat. There were also grammatical errors, missing letters in words, and this is also ironically evident in their game description where they refer Axel as Alex 6 times. Once I completed the story at level 72, there was nothing left for me to do but continue to do the remaining levels with no incentive. So I did levels 72-75 but I gave up as there was no real motive, with the booster exploit and nothing left to unlock, no more dialogues to go through, I would also not see the characters again. 

The game simply isn't ambitious enough with its content and efforts to keep me playing for longer, there is also no way to start the game again (unless you search for the save and delete it I assume). I also cannot overlook the bugs, grammatical and visual errors and finally, the exploits in a puzzle game that is meant to challenge me to think.

Fantasy match 3 + 100 levels + art = A casual and relaxing puzzle game for all ages. Complete objectives for each stage to earn crystals and build up the city. Use boosters to help complete stages.

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