317 people found this review helpful
2 people found this review funny
Not Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 13.9 hrs on record
Posted: Dec 26, 2013 @ 8:10am
Updated: Feb 5, 2014 @ 3:06am

To preface this review, I have beat the game. This review is not out of frustration for not being able to accomplish that, but it is out of frustration from the game in general.

For a match 3 game the concept is novel, adding a requirement of matching specific tiles to progress.

Unfortunately once the novelty wears off, it becomes a chore. And the novelty will wear off, because the game is stacked against you in multiple ways, and requires you to lose repeatedly to complete tasks and buy upgrades (which soon become an artificial barrier to gameplay) before winning it even becomes possible.

The main barrier to fun in the game is the manner of losing - not the inevitability, as with Tetris, but the speed at which it can happen. Every obstacle requires a specific type of match - attacks or keys - and the game can at whim decide to deprive you of these, leaving you helpless to do anything but wait until defeat.

Other problems with the control system compound this. For instance, sliding the tiles is not well designed. If you click a tile, it can only slide by the first direction the mouse moves. So if you want to drag a tile upwards but your mouse moves a LITTLE to the left first, your tiles will try moving left and right instead. You can try again while the mouse button is held down, but you've lost that time.

The matching detection is not great either. When you line or nearly line up a match, their tiles illuminate, however when you let go the tile you're moving can fit to an adjacent space, meaning the match does not occur and you have to start again. Once more, this costs time.

The game needs resource management - trying to keep a healthy number of attack tiles and keys on the board at all times to be ready for any obstacles that arrive, but a couple of things ruin this as a concept and make the game even less fun.

The monsters - particularly boss class monsters - require a LOT of matches and items to defeat, during which time you're losing time AND they hit you which also costs a nasty chunk of time. It goes without saying that despite the whole upgrade system, matching attack tiles is just not effective enough to keep the game balanced.

The game can and does throw numerous amounts of the same obstacles at you consecutively, such as two chests, a door and then another chest. Even if you kept a healthy number of keys available at the start of this, you probably won't have enough to get through it all which leads to a lot of lost time and defeat. The same applies to multiple tough monsters.

Matching tiles or using an item JUST before you arrive at an obstacle will cause it to be wasted. There's no tolerance whatsoever. This can lead to situations where you're not blocked by an obstacle, and too afraid to do anything because you don't want to lose the matches you can see available to you. This is contrary to the game's advertised element.

Finally, when you match tiles, more appear which can result in combos. Normally in this kind of game these are desirable, but in this game they can and will punish you by decimating a resource you can see yourself needing soon - for instance, if you're fighting a monster with a chest behind it, a few keys may fall in during the fight, matching with the ones already on the board and severely depleting the keys. Then when you win the fight you won't be able to deal with the chest.

Furthermore, when newly-fallen tiles create combos, this takes time during which you are unable to slide any tiles to make more matches. This results in awkward situations where you can see multiple matches you want to make but are unable to do so because a useless combo is ongoing and killing you in the process.

You do get a very limited number of items, but most of the time an item does not even clear one of its respective obstacles. After a few hours of play to finally be able to challenge for the game's namesake 10,000,000 points (yes, you need to play for a few hours before winning a game even becomes a possibility), key items will not be enough to open a three-lock chest or door, and you will need at least three damage items to defeat a single monster.

This game had promise, but its execution is disastrous. Its visuals and music are very fun for a few hours, but they do not last the extended periods of time demanded of you when the game becomes an unfair and repetitive grind.
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27 Comments
KliPeH Apr 6, 2023 @ 3:38am 
Thank you for this incredibly well-written review!
LadySky89 Apr 29, 2017 @ 10:30am 
Yeah, I got it. :D
But I mean entirely (or almost) full, not just a couple of matches, in that case I sacrifice them for bonus time coming from massive matching.
Miraglyth Apr 29, 2017 @ 8:19am 
"Of course you won't see me matching anything at all if my screen is full of swords and staves"

Entirely my point.
LadySky89 Apr 29, 2017 @ 8:05am 
I'm saying what I'm saying just because I tried both playstyles, dynamic and cautionous (1 year ago on my phone, it took much longer to finish the game than this second run on pc, even considering that I hadn't to do any achievements on my phone). Of course you won't see me matching anything at all if my screen is full of swords and staves, I try to keep it balanced, but I found out that a dynamic (intelligent, not just randomly matching everything you see) gameplay is more fruitful. I solved many situations in which I seemed to be stuck by just fast matching other things around and keeping my time left as high as possible for these reasons.

As for resources other than wood/stone being wasted, I already said that I agree, they could've been at least enqueued to be used on incoming obstacle, maybe at halfed effect.

It was an interesting conversation anyway. :)
Good luck and have fun.
Miraglyth Apr 29, 2017 @ 7:16am 
We'll need to agree to disagree.

Saying you have all the achievements doesn't really count for much as I have them too and it appears I spent longer getting The Jose. Most of my failed runs were explicitly *because* unnecessary matches caused an unwanted combo that wiped out my keys/swords/staves.

It doesn't matter if the board is "flowing". You need to bring in lots of new tiles when you have a low number of key resources, but when you have a high number it is more vital that you don't lose them. Sometimes that means not making matches as that risks combos wiping them out by accident.

It seems like you got a little more lucky in that department, but that doesn't change the core of my issue: This is a match-3 game where matching a key resource outside of their use time causes them to be totally wasted, and where said key resources can be matched when you don't plan for them to be. To me that is an irredeemable design failure.
LadySky89 Apr 29, 2017 @ 5:58am 
In certain things YMBAB is worse than 10.000.000 and your review would fit it much more than 10.000.000.
LadySky89 Apr 29, 2017 @ 5:58am 
For the optimal gameplay, in 10.000.000 the board must keep flowing, with a bit of attention maybe only for matches of 4 or 5 identical items, but for the rest, you'll still need more than a match to defeat monsters, so worrying too much is useless. Unwanted combos might even end up summoning triple of the swords/staves consumed, in the emergencies items on the left come finally handy to solve situations.

10.000.000 is a game of speed matching using a logic when required to solve obstacles. YMBAB is different... as there's almost no way to gain time, YMBAB requires more micro-management than speed to open new moves against monsters, specially since items occupy space in the board instead of having their own slots, and swords/staves appear more rarely, while you need plenty to kill a mob. Gold is slower to do, so you need to grind a lot of small runs, while upgrade are expensive and only apply small bonuses.
LadySky89 Apr 29, 2017 @ 5:52am 
As someone that completed all achievements, I can't agree with this.. the gain in time from simply moving can be enough or not depending on how long you wish that run to continue.

Useless combos are never useless, wood and stone, being the most useful in terms of time gain; if you're running, and you trigger a combo of 4-5 in a row containing at least some of these, you're gonna immediatly move from half screen to the extreme right, where the bonus in score starts counting.

With this I'm not saying that you should wipe everything, but too worry too much will prevent you from actually having long runs: you get more damaged by micromanaging the board than not. In 9 hours of gameplay it happened to me to remain out of keys/weapons only 5-10% of the time, and I solved very fast by matching other resources to make the wanted items appear back. In the long term, this way you last longer and your scores will increase.
Miraglyth Apr 28, 2017 @ 3:17pm 
Brief addition with an even more obvious situation: If the character is moving and not stopped by an obstacle, AND you have a healthy collection of every useful resource type on the board, the best move is clearly to do nothing.
Miraglyth Apr 28, 2017 @ 3:13pm 
I didn't think the clarification would be needed, but I did have all upgrades purchased. If I hadn't, of course I would have thought to get the rest of them before concluding on the game's flaws.

I critically disagree that the worst move is always no move. If you have two or more possible matches for a resource you need now - say keys - it is absolutely advantageous to pause for a moment if you need to work out which is least likely to wipe out other useful resources.

Rushing to make the fastest match in that situation risks an unwanted combo. And since the character will just be walking through the chest/door, anything removed by an unplanned combo - swords, staves, or keys - will be completely wasted... and then shortly afterwards you'll reach the next obstacle and have no resources left to overcome it.

That's terrible design in my view. A design which one glance at the YMBAB video told me they made no effort to rectify.