The Magic of Three

The Magic of Three is a hidden gem of a puzzle game. It's a pity that it seems to have seen zero uptake. Look past its missteps - its inexplicably uncapitalized title, uninspired store page description, and unvaried tileset - and you'll find an extremely clever, genuinely unique, and optionally very challenging puzzle game. At its core, this is a puzzle platformer (without jumping) where you use limited abilities to make matches of the same color. What makes this simple concept ingenious are the small moveset which interacts in delightfully varied ways, the great level design, and the resource management. The Abilities By yourself, all you can do is walk left and right and push lone blocks horizontally; and some tiles also allow movement through the air, vertically and over pits. When you pick up a colored gem, you can consume it and use its ability any time within a generous distance from yourself. The red ability destroys one tile; the blue ability teleport you to a tile; and the ...

This was actually a really enjoyable game with several really nifty designs. Now, I have been quite wary of puzzle platformers because too many put too much weight on the platformer part, requiring very precise movements and timing. And in many cases, my progress is halted by those (which I am horrible at) instead of figuring out the puzzles (which I am often good enough at). This game is pure puzzle: the action takes place on 2D platforms but no need to worry about timing or managing to execute precise jumps and tumbles to get things done. The game is something of a combination of sokoban and match-3 on a platformer: move colored blocks (and some other elements) to get three in a line, making them disappear, so you can collect collectables and move further on the level. Familiar mechanisms, but the combination and how it is done here is great. And even though the 27 levels unlock one by one, at later stages I could basically force through the level ignoring the collectables and mo...

A very satisfying experience. Do not miss this, if you enjoy pure puzzle games. This is absolutely not a typical "match three" game with a randomised set of tiles. This game has a sokoban-like element to it: movement is tile-based, and objects can be pushed but not pulled. It is possible to work oneself into a corner - as the Golem cannot jump - but the game features a rewind system which allows going as far back as the beginning of the current level, should you so desire. Additionally, throughout the game the player character discovers abilities which allow for manipulation of in-game objects. These are: the ability to break a breakable object, the ability to spawn an object, the ability to teleport the player character, and the ability to teleport an object or change its colour. Getting the par scores requires using these abilities to their full potential. The game features achievements for simply getting through a level and for finishing it reaching the par score displayed in the ...