More casual puzzle games? You got it! And it’s not just one either, but a whole bunch compiled under one title.
In Hoyle Enchanted Puzzles you play as a young magic apprentice in search of the Mistress of Skye, the greatest magic teacher. But to find her you will have to go through a series of trials from other creatures.
The game is set as an adventure separated into a series of stages. Each stage represents a specific game – your trials – with several levels to go through. So essentially, it is pretty much what you know from Diner Dash progression. But not quite.
Every time you complete one level of a given game you are rewarded with what can be called the game’s currency. There are three kinds of tokens you can earn from playing the games: Mind, Nature and Craft. You use these tokens to “purchase” new games on the world map and unlock more levels to the games you already “own”.
So what sort of games are there in Enchanted Puzzles? Actually, quite a few, and they are quite diverse, which was a great surprise.
Pixie Blocks is like a Collapse clone, with a twist: you have a limited number of clicks to clear pre-set groups of blocks before you can advance a level, for example, make a combo of 10. There are also special blocks that swap colors or explode adjacent blocks.
In the Dark Lake you will go fishing. This is a side-scrolling game where your boat floats on top of the lake, and you see the bottom portion with all kinds of fish, treasure and some obstacles. Your goal is to catch a certain number of a particular fish. Other fish will be worth less points, poison fish will take away points, treasure gives you extra points and harpooning rocks will slow you down for a while. Some of the levels in Dark Lake are like a shooter, you click the fish to shoot at them instead of pulling them up.
Fairy Races is a very simple racing game. The background moves and you have to adjust your fairy’s position with the mouse pointer, avoiding obstacles, collecting power-ups and using your boost to beat the other fairies to the finish line.
Mystic Tripeaks is a card game based on Tripeaks. It doesn’t really have the three peaks since the puzzle designs vary, but it has three piles. You have to clear all the cards by stacking them according to their value in any of the piles. You can only remove a card if it’s one up or one down from the value of the face cards, and you have a limited number of shuffles to use when you’re out of moves.
Alchemy is your Bejeweled clone, but with a little twist as well. Aside from making matches of three or more by swapping any two pieces, you must also collect the potion bottles that appear randomly on the puzzle field.
Pyromancy is so simple, yet it’s fun to play. All you do is move the mouse pointer over the incoming fireworks, and then click to detonate them. The more you detonate at the same time, the higher your score bonus. I especially like it because of the fireworks effects.
Celestial Spheres is just like Zuma, but your launcher isn’t stationary. You throw bubbles at the chain to make combos of three or more, but now and again some power-ups will come down. You have to catch them with your launcher.
Rune Jong is obviously Mahjong, with rune symbols. Each level has a different layout to clear, always by matching pairs. If you manage to find the two key tiles and match them, it will instantly clear all remaining tiles.
Gnome Mines is a puzzle where you take a series of Tetris-based pieces and place them on the mine carts. You can rotate them to fit, and once the cart is full, you are awarded points depending on how much of the same color you have put together. You can also click on the little bats flying around for extra points.
The pieces get more complicated in shape and offer more colors as you progress, and you will have more carts to fill.
The presentation is quite nice, the music would fit any Harry Potter movie, the characters and stages include all kinds of fantasy creatures ranging from gnomes to pixies and fairies, and the artwork is quite nice as well.
I have to say, I didn’t expect this much variety, and definitely not from a casual puzzle game. To top it off. some of the puzzles even have bonus levels, where the goals will be quite different from the normal gameplay. Besides, some of my favorite casual puzzles are in here (Bejeweled, Mahjong, Tripeaks), so how could I not like it? And for some reason, I got really attached to the fireworks game, it’s just so much fun for no apparent reason. Or maybe I just like shiny things and cool particle effects…
Hoyle Enchanted Puzzles is jam-packed with puzzle goodness. Expect to spend some long hours working on those trials before you are deemed worthy of meeting the Mistress of Skye.
Special thanks to Christopher Natsuume and Boomzap for providing a copy of this title.