Battlemouth

What I love most about a good puzzle game is when you can pick it up and play it right away but then after 3 weeks of playing you can still be getting better at it. Honing skills and learning new techniques to me is what makes a puzzle game worth your time. Gel Set & Match approaches this idea with the same philosophy resulting in a great time for the hardcore and casual puzzle fans.

The premise is simple match 3 blocks of the same color and they’re vanish. You can move the blocks a variety of ways such as pushing them, throwing them, or blowing them up. When a 3 blocks have combined they go into a reactive state for a few seconds before they vanish allowing you to combo and chain same colored blocks off of them for more points and clearing action. Add in immovable blocks, gates, switches, teleporters, and other obstacles and you’ve got quite a robust puzzle game and thats just puzzle mode!

In addition to puzzle mode you’ve got adventure mode where you need to clear blocks as fast as possible to make room for your friends that drive unreasonably large vehicles to fit through. This mode becomes frantic very fast and requires some fine tuned block clearing skills to really excel. Then we’ve got the game modes where you compete against the CPU or other players in competitions such as volleyball with bombs. These modes really shine when you’re playing with friends.

Which brings up another feature I forgot to mention, multiplayer puzzle mode. This mode is pretty much the same as puzzle mode except it relies on complete cooperation with your partner to complete puzzles under par. Par is the number of moves you’re allowed to make in a puzzle to be considered as actually completing it efficiently.

Gel Set & Match is definitely worth picking up for anyone interested in the puzzle game genre or looking for a fun game to play with friends. You can tell a lot of time went into this game with extra care towards really fleshing on the game, each puzzle you complete gives you coins that you can outfit your character with which adds just another level of depth to the game which keeps you playing.You can download the demo here

Gel Set & Match is the full bodied multi featured puzzler you’ve been waiting to pop up on XBLA so check it out.