Meta-games are all the rage these days. Apparently, simple games just aren’t good enough for casual gamers anymore. Developers think you want extra objectives and fancy complex systems on top of your beloved puzzles. And that’s a good thing. Because it’s always great to see new twists on old games hit the market. Enkord is serving up just such a mish-mash in their latest title, Clayside.

Clayside is a match-3, but don’t be fooled. It’s a fancy next-gen match-3, with plenty of meta-game objectives, level building, and snazzy graphics of the same claymation style you might remember from Platypus. You can slide the rows vertically or horizontally to make matches, just like in Chuzzle, but the layout for every level is different and fresh. Instead of making matches near blocks to break them, or on tiles to break them, you do both. You can also destroy special keys to break locks that open other parts of the levels.

As you make matches, you advance a power meter and unlock new specials that will appear on the board as you play. Each time you make enough matches, you can choose between two powers. There are quite a few of these, and several levels of each power. Additionally, as you do well in the levels you get to add on to your house, which is in Clayside and slowly gets bigger and more magnificent as you continue. You start out with a dinky, sad looking house, and eventually move to something that Paris Hilton would be jealous of.

While Clayside certainly isn’t built on the most original concepts ever, it’s very well executed and does a good job of blending the familiar in a way that seems new and fresh. If you’re looking for a nice match-3 that has some exciting new elements, you should definitely give it a try.

Graphics:
Gameplay:
Story:
Sound:
Overall Rating:

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...