Created by Studio Craft Development Lily’s Epic Quest got my interest over being a match-three type of game, I was in for a surprise in terms of mechanics. After all, match-three games are a dime a dozen and with so many out there, what could this one have to offer to set it apart from the rest? Well, I soon found out that behind the childish appearance lies an increasingly difficult puzzle game.
Lily is a little girl who wants to grow up to be an archeologist just like her grandfather. One day, her grandfather is taken to the hospital, and leaves her a treasure map. Lily decides to honor her grandfather’s wish and find as much treasure as she possibly can.
Each area of the world map is composed of several stages. Each stage has specific goals, such as find a secret passage, reach a certain depth, gather a number of parts to create an object or get a certain amount of treasure. This is all done by opening up a path for Lily to reach these goals, while matching gems in set of three or more.
The major difference between Lily’s Epic Quest and other match-three puzzle games is that you will always start with a limited number of moves, always have a goal to accomplish, and most importantly, gravity does not apply. You will soon find out that when you match blocks and make a space, the ones above will not fall, which can really complicate things.
You move Lily with one stick and the cursor with another, and you have to search the puzzle field and actually analyze it before making a move, as not to waste the few you begin with. Can you get Lily to where you want her to go by matching nearby gems? Do you have enough moves to get there? Glowing gems will give you extra moves when matched, but watch out for where the little pieces drop to, you might actually lose them. If you don’t get to them quickly, they will also disappear.
You can drop a given block by using one move, but it doesn’t work on all blocks, and I still don’t understand why that is exactly. Also, dropping blocks on top of extra move pieces will crush them and make them disappear.
Matching 4 or more gems will grant you a power-up to help you along, such as a radar that points you towards treasure, a drill that digs in whatever direction you choose, or a bomb that explodes a 3×3 section. These will be particularly helpful, especially the radar since you really have no indication of which way to go unless you can visibly see something on the board. In sum, it’s a puzzle game with a lot of strategy and thinking involved, which you would not expect from a match-three.
While I like the concept and the challenge, I find the execution is lacking. The controls are a bit awkward, and it’s easy to lose the cursor and leave it behind while moving Lily all over the puzzle board. She also moves very, VERY slowly, which gets frustrating when walking through large sections of the puzzle field when there are obstacles that force you to go a certain way. And oddly enough, Lily insists on stopping to stare at the camera whenever you move her up, down or sideways, which causes a split second delay that is more than enough to make you misdirect her and miss out on items because she is stuck in a loop from pressing so many times to try and correct her path.
Also frustrating are the stages where you can’t do more than a couple of moves and are left completely stranded and forced to restart. This will happen, so get used to it. The only way around it is to restart the stage and hope for a better gem placement.
I find that there should have been some sort of indication of where to look at the start of the stage. Seeing as the radar barely helps, I think that this power-up should actually show the camera panning to its location and back to Lily, and not just an arrow blinking for a few seconds. Alternatively, having a zoomed out view of the entire puzzle field at the start of the stage would have given us a pretty good idea of which way to go, instead of blindly going around all the time.
Needless to say, this is a game reserved for the most patient of puzzle enthusiasts.
The music got particularly annoying after a short time, as you listen to the same tune over and over in each and every stage. It you ever wanted a good reason to use a custom playlist, this is it. To top it off, Lily’s voice is an absolute disaster. I think it would have been much better to have a child do the voice over instead of an adult trying to pretend to sound like one, and to top it off, sound immensely dumb. Lily’s little exclamations become repetitive, as she only says a handful of things, and probably more annoying than the music itself.
On the plus side, there are over 100 stages, hundreds of collectibles, a leaderboard and the option to go head to head with someone else as you show off your matching/treasure hunting skills.
While in essence this is a pretty good puzzle game that hides behinds a childish mask, Lily’s Epic Quest becomes a lot less epic mostly because of the slow pace and single-tune soundtrack.