Don’t bother with GoG user reviews. They’re all fanboi terrible. I’ve given quite a few games I’ve purchased low reviews, but after a while I figured that there were few bigger wastes of time than being a speck of dust in a sandstorm.
Good lord that’s cheap for such a good game.
Yeah, I’m not even into puzzle games and I bought it.
But wait, is it a match-3 game at its core? I loved, loved, loved Puzzle Quest and all they were trying to do, but in the end I just couldn’t keep playing it because I just hate the whole match-3/Bejeweled type of core gameplay. Everything Puzzle Quest layered on top of that was great, but when I don’t enjoy the core gameplay, there’s only so long I can stand playing a game.
The demo video on Steam makes it look like Tetris. Only without the shape-matching, since I’m only seeing single tiles come down.
You have to play Tidalis to really grok it. It’s much more complex than Tetris or Puzzle Quest.
Just fork over the buck fiddy and find out for yourselves :)
Well, it’s true that Dungeon Raid did eventually win me over, but I had to play the demo first. The problem is that looking at the video makes it look like I don’t want to play at all, who cares what the price is.
It is not match 3. It’s hard to say what it is… as it is unique. You have to line up streams and then launch them. If they hit at least three blocks, those blocks disappear. But you don’t really match them…
Demo/Browser Versions: http://www.arcengames.com/w/index.php/tidalis-downloads
I’ll add my voice to the “get Tidalis” crowd.
A space shooter I’ve never heard of called Spacefighters is on sale for $1.99 at D2D, so I of course bought it.
Wow, just played through 6 levels. It’s kinda mindless shmup fun, but wow is it rudimentary. The graphics look out of the early 90’s, the sound effects are servicible, but the best part is the music. It’s a lone piano which sounds like it’s playing music from a high school drama production of something serious. It’s unintentionally hilarious, and kinda Charlie Brownesque, but not as good.
Tyjenks
1652
From the Steam page:
“Tidalis is a match-3 game that doesn’t feel tired or repetitive: I actually want to play it, which says something considering how many puzzle games I’ve reviewed. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Tidalis is one of the best puzzle game I’ve ever played. Simply put, if you like puzzle games (and even if you usually don’t), you need to get Tidalis. Right now. Go!”
James Allen, Out of Eight PC Game Reviews (8/8 score)
Good enough for me and I loathe Match 3-ish games…except Dungeon Raid. Puzzle Quest got old after a little while.
Just got Tidalis, seems like quite a clever little game. Easily worth a buck fifty.
Damn, it’s really addictive.
Tyjenks
1655
So I have some mild color blindness so in Tidalis I am very glad the ones you are not rotating dim, but just looking at the board, I have trouble with a couple of the colors.
http://www.arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Tidalis_-Getting_Started#Choosing_A_Block_Style.28Including_Colorblind_Considerations.29
Tyjenks
1657
Brilliant! Didn’t think to look. Thanks Tim!
habibi
1658
The beauty of Arcen Games titles is that they are completely DRM free. Even if you buy them from steam, you can plug the CD Key into the versions you download from the Arcen website just fine.
I don’t get the love for Tidalis here. I just tried the demo, and it’s a match-3 game, with no depth at all, and the meta-game is complete garbage. At first blush, it looks different from match-3, but finding groups of like-colored blocks and lining up their arrows so they point at each other is still the same root mechanic as match-3. You can, in theory, line up combos, but it’s pretty much like lining up combos in any match-3 game since Bejeweled it’s far more about luck and chaos than actual planning. It’s made worse by the fact that most modes are timed, so you don’t have the luxury of trying to make what rudimentary planning would matter.
What really puts the icing on the fact that it’s a mindless browser game are the “rewards” for finishing a level. You’ll “collect” stuff like 135 old tires. It’s random junk, and serves no purpose at all. The game doesn’t even remember most of what you collected, it throws away everything but the current “high score,” i.e. 400 or so toy robots. It means absolutely nothing, not even as a scoring mechanism.
Dungeon Raid, it ain’t. Just to make things worse, the demo didn’t uninstall correctly, so now Tidalis appears permanently on my list of Steam games. No files, but it’s there.
