Playfirst presents us with another solitaire-based puzzle game, which interestingly has a theme of archaeological expeditions throughout the ancient world. It’s a bit of a stretch to say that clearing levels of tiles based on playing cards has anything to do with real archaeology, but as is usually the case, the storyline is just an excuse for a fun and diverting puzzle game.
The game is played on a 5x6 board of randomly dealt playing cards. There are two game modes which are similar in execution, but differ in their objective: In Expedition Mode, you collect sets of solitaire hands from the board until you have collected at least one of every card in the deck, shown on the side of the screen as four stacks of all the suits. Meanwhile, in Challenge Mode, you must build the four stacks of all the suits by collecting cards from the board in order.
You can build a set of cards by clicking on adjacent cards, always only being able to add a card if it is adjacent to your existing selections. Once you have collected a set that is consecutive, you can click on “Select” to pick it up – with bonus points if you managed to alternate red and black suits. As you collect sets, new cards “fall” from the top of the screen, bumping existing cards towards the bottom of the screen to fill gaps left by collected cards, so the order you take cards in becomes important.
There are also power-ups that can blow up tiles or change their suits, which can be collected by collecting certain card values, and some tiles on the board which give a bonus, like jokers that take the best possible value for any set, bombs which score multiple adjacent cards on the score stack, and score multipliers that are slightly reminiscent of Scrabble. Later on, you also get Peril tiles that freeze a card value in place until it’s been collected enough times, “smoking” tiles that force you to restart if they reach the bottom of the board, and even “burning” tiles which turn adjacent tiles into smoking tiles! Thankfully, with the exception of some annoying Perils that take effect after a timer runs out, there is no overall time limit for completing levels.
As you complete levels, you move from dig site to dig site, gathering pieces of various ancient relics, and your complete relics are displayed in a Museum screen. You can also get bonus artifacts which are only available if you manage to complete a level while fulfilling certain conditions, like finishing a level within a certain number of moves, or only using alternating suit colors for the entire level.
The artwork is par for the course, with some nice classical Greek-style designs for the face cards, as well as images of all the artifacts you win. Smoking tiles smoke, burning tiles burn, and overall, the animated effects give a lively feel to an otherwise static game. Selected cards that fit into a solitaire set glow green, while those that don’t fit are highlighted slightly orange, but that was a bit hard for me to see at first. The background music is unobtrusive but not really noteworthy either.
Review by
Poh Tun Kai
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