jewel maniaFormat: iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch

Developer: TeamLava

US iTunes, App Store, iBookstore, and Mac App Store

In the puzzle genre one thing that I think will never go away is those types of games that require you to match three of a certain thing in a row. That is pretty much what we have here with Jewel Mania. This can be quite the tough genre to make any kind of impact in, but TeamLava have taken a pretty risky approach. Rather than try to blow peoples mind with anew take they have made a few little changes here and there to the formula in the hopes that it will capture peoples imagination. Does it work? Well read on to find out.

Jewel Mania is a fine looking game. The actual jewel’s that you are trying to match together look nice enough, but the thing that really captures your attention is the nice background art that TeamLavan have created. As good as they look they never distract way from the game which is always a good thing.

So the idea of the game is that you need to clear a screen of jewels by matching three of them together. You do this by swiping along to move them around. It is a simple, but addictive concept that a thousand other games like this use. And they use it for good reason because it works and it works well. The thing is this is quite the basic match three shapes game. Do not get me wrong it is a good one, but you are always left wanting more.

This is certainly a quick sit down and play game and each screen you will need to clear will last at the most probably 60 seconds at most. AS well as having to match three jewels in a row you will have another objective as well to do. For example you may need to get a certain amount of points. Or make sure that a certain type of tile is destroyed. These little I guess you could call mini missions do a great job of mixing the core game play up and making the game more interesting.

A big problem I have with the game is that you are limited as to how much you can play it. You see you need to pay one gem in order to play a level. Now to be fair if you beat a level you are rewarded with a gem. So if you are good at the game then you will probably be able to play as much as you like. But I had an occasion when I lost a few times in a row on a certain level and lost all my gems. Now I either had to wait or spend some real money to buy more gems. Now you can use coins that you get in the game to buy gems, but I never managed to get that many coins if I am honest.

Now Jewel Mania is at its core a good game. I did have fun playing this, but I always felt that there was something missing. It is worth a download, but I would not expect this to be a game that people will still be plying a year from now.

US iTunes, App Store, iBookstore, and Mac App Store

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