Recent reviews by kris.aalst

Heroes of Hellas 3: Athens is a very good match-3 game with engaging gameplay and with enough variation in its many levels to feel like playing 'just one more level' before calling it a night.



Athens is in ruins and it's up to you to rebuild the city. You'll need coin for that, which you'll earn by completing match-3 levels. While rebuilding the city, some gods will look favourably upon you and offer help, whereas other gods will unleash disastrous events on the city you're trying to rebuild. Discover who's behind all this and how you need to defeat that god. Fortunately you'll be able to count on a helping hand by some of the other gods.



There are several types of gameplay for creating a chain of tiles in match-3 games. In Heroes of Hellas 3: Athens, you click and drag your mouse pointer over a number of adjacent tiles that can be combined. Releasing the mouse button will execute your move.

By executing a move the tiles you selected disappear and all the 'strong tiles' adjacent to your selected tiles get damaged. By strong tiles I mean reinforced stone tiles, frozen tiles, and tiles protected by one or two ropes or chains.

Dragging the mouse pointer across at least three tiles of the same color is a classic match. But a valid selection of tiles in Heroes of Hellas 3: Athens may also include coins, bombs and lightning circles. These act like wild cards to make a valid selection of tiles. So two bombs and one orange tile are a valid match-3 in this game.

The coins you collect are meant to pay for building structures in the town of Athens.

Lightning circles make lightning explode from that tile in various directions. Lightning destroys all basic tiles and coins, and keeps going until it hits the edge of the game board or until it hits and damages a strong tile.

Bombs cause an area-of-effect explosion, destroying simple tiles and coins, and damaging strong tiles. Stronger bombs mean stronger explosions.

As the story progresses and as you continue building structures in Athens, a number of gods will help you with your efforts. Every god has a different way to help you. Think of things like destroying tiles, rearranging tiles, turning tiles into coins, and more.

Also, every god has its very own type of tile. By collecting the tiles that are related to a particular god, you charge the power of that god. When the god's skill charge reaches a certain limit, you can use that power. Patience to fill the god's power to its full potential before unleashing it is often most rewarding but it depends on the situation.

In every level of the game you get three gods standing by to help you. The three types of tiles connected with those three gods will be among the tiles on the playfield. Tiles related to other gods never turn up in that level.

When starting a new game, you have to choose between 'relaxed mode' and 'timed mode'. As you suspect, timed mode means you have a ticking clock on your screen and you have to finish the level before the clock runs out. In relaxed mode you have all the time in the world.



Graphics are as nice as you can expect from a match-3 game. Sound effects are serviceable enough.

A special shoutout for the music in this game. Sure, the few alternating tunes get repetitive but a couple of them really managed to stick with me and were playing joyfully in my mind after a gaming session.



Heroes of Hellas 3: Athens has 6 Steam Trading Cards. You'll get 3 while running the game.

The game has no Steam Achievements but it does have built-in achievements. All of them have three levels (stars). Most of them are easy to max out simply by playing the game, but at least one achievement isn't easy to acquire because it requires completing levels before half of the time runs out, meaning you can't get this achievement in relaxed mode.

Elex 2 is a third-person action role-playing game (ARPG) by Piranha Bytes. The games by this German studio are so unique in terms of atmosphere and playstyle, they might as well be their own subgenre within ARPGs. That's why I'll refer to the collective works of Piranha Bytes as 'PB games' in this review.

Elex was definitely the best PB game since Risen, and maybe even since Gothic 2. Elex 2 continues this trend and manages to top its predecessor.

Elex 2 has a true open world with exciting and dangerous places to discover. It has five joinable factions, each having a distinct philosophy and memorable NPCs. It offers choices that matter in the long run, and it has noticeable character progression.

But Elex 2 does have its flaws, as well. The melee combat can feel clunky (yes, again!) and the attribute system is little else than a platform for skill and weapon requirements.

If you're into PB games and especially Elex, you'll like or even love Elex2. If you're into ARPGs but aren't sure about PB games, first you need to answer two questions. 1. Do you expect games to be perfectly polished? 2. Do you expect to be a god who can kill anything in his way from the very beginning of a game? If you answered 'yes' to either question, Elex 2 is not for you. If you think you can accept some flaws and a difficulty curve, provided the other aspects of ARPGs are present and excitingly so, you may want to give Elex 2 a chance.



You play Jax, a former Alb commander. In the first Elex game, he saves the world from a threat, only to find out years later that there is another related threat that requires him to take up the role of reluctant saviour of the planet Magalan once again.



Gameplay is typical third-person ARPG with three types of combat: melee, ranged and magic.

For some reason, melee combat is often the worst part of PB games. In Gothic, Gothic 2 and Risen, melee combat was okay, but in their other games it was pretty bad. In Elex there was some improvement but a ranged build was still superior to a melee build, In Elex 2, the melee combat is a bit better than it was in Elex, but the execution still causes frustration due to the clunky combat.

So ranged combat is a lot more enjoyable. There is a wide range of ranged weapons in Elex 2. Bows and crossbows, as seen in the Gothic series. Guns, as seen in the last two Risen games. And you'll also be able to use flamethrowers, harpoon guns, laser rifles, and so on.

Magic is a valid option but not as overpowered as it was in some previous PB games. Both the Berserker and Alb factions have decent magic spells but you will want to invest in another weapon type (melee or ranged) for the times where you’re out of magical power.

Elex 2 has classic character development. You gain XP by completing quests and killing opponents. When you level up, you can increase attributes and abilities. You need to increase your attributes to learn better abilities and to equip better weapons. The attribute increase by itself doesn’t make you much stronger. For every 5 points invested in an attribute, you gain 1 point. For example, every 5 points you invest in dexterity will increase your ranged damage by one. When your ranged weapons deal 500+ damage, a +1 bonus means nothing.

The factions are satisfyingly different and they each offer strong and weak points. Also, some factions can only be joined after you’ve reached a certain rank in another faction. This adds to replayability.

The jetpack from the first game gets a huge upgrade. Again, it adds an additional dimension to the game world, because you can explore the roofs of buildings and towers and such, and often get rewarded for it. But in Elex 2 you can upgrade the jetpack by adding more fuel so as to be able to stay in the air longer, you can learn how to float in the air while using your weapons to pick off enemies, and so on.

PB games never start out easy. Elex 2 is no exception but to me it felt like the easiest PB game to surmount that initial difficulty curve.



The graphics of Elex 2 aren't triple-A quality. To hide this a bit, PB decided to cover the world in a permanent fog. I think this was a bad choice. I even made a guide that explains how to reduce or remove the fog. And although the graphics still don't look perfect after that little tweak, I think the world of Elex is a lot nicer than its creators gave themselves credit for.

The music is atmospheric but not memorable. The quality of the sound effects is okay.

The voice acting is decent to good. I have to stress that lip syncing is amazing in this game. I don’t remember a game where the lip sync was so spot on that I took notice of it. Even though the game was originally in German, the English voiceover goes with the most perfect lip sync I ever saw, so Elex 2 deserves a very special nomination for that.



Elex 2 has 6 Steam Trading Cards. You'll get 3 while running the game.

The 50 Steam Achievements are extremely varied. There are some story-related achievements, some faction-related achievements, some achievements that require you to collect a series of items scattered across the game world, some achievements that require you to do menial tasks like killing x opponents by means of y, or collecting x amount of elexit (the currency in the game).

This is a classic Monopoly game you can play with as many computer players and/or human players as you want. You can set the difficulty of AI players and you can select one rule that deviates from the classic Monopoly rules.

The problem is the game crashes often. Sometimes you can play for an hour without problems, and sometimes you'll experience 3 crashes in 15 minutes time.

I also read a lot of complaints that the online part of the game doesn't work very well at all. I can't personally speak about that because I've only played it solo against a couple of computer opponents.

Santa's Holiday is a decent run-of-the-mill match 3 game spanning 100 levels. Its major downside is that although in theory the game's difficulty increases with each level, it actually gets easier. And of course its Christmas setting may mean people consider it a seasonal game or they would never consider playing it.



Santa is tired and went on a holiday. So you have to help the elves get everything in order for Christmas… by solving match 3 puzzles. You weren't really looking for an in-depth story in a match 3 game, were you?



Typical match 3 gameplay. You have to drag one item to an adjacent spot to swap it with the item in that spot so as to create a row of 3 of the same items. Matching 4 or 5 of the same items rewards you with bonus items, for instance a bomb that destroys the items around it.

The items are Christmas-themed: Santa's face, Christmas trees, red stockings, sugar canes, and so on.

You have a limited amount of moves to clear each level.

As the levels progress, you'll encounter additional challenges. For example, you'll see some crates that can only be destroyed by matching 3 or more items right next to them. And you'll see locked items that can only be unlocked by matching 3 or more items right next to them.

The game offers 4 helpful items that you can buy to help finish a level. These items destroy an item, destroy an obstacle, reshuffle all the items on the board or remove all the items of one type.

By completing levels you get gold. Gold can be used to buy items from the elves to decorate your personal room. Each item you buy immediately adds crystals to your wallet.

It's clear the game used to be a mobile game where you could spend real money to buy additional cystals. For the Steam version, the in-app purchases have been removed. But when you run out of moves, the game asks you if you want to spend 20 crystals to buy 5 extra moves to continue trying to beat the level. All of the four helpful items I mentioned earlier are also exclusively bought by spending crystals.

This has a strange effect on the difficulty curve of the game. The levels get progressively more difficult but the amount of moves you're allowed also increases, so that pretty much balances each other out. During the first few dozens of levels you'll find you have to either spend what little crystals you have or choose the better option and restart the level, especially if you don't have any crystals left.

But when you get to the higher levels, you'll have so many crystals you can buy all the helpful items you want and even buy 5 extra moves if you're very close to completing the level. So the difficulty actually decreases as the game progresses.



The graphics are as one would expect from a match 3 game. They're colourful and vibrant.

The music deserves a special mention. There are three (or was it four?) pieces of music that alternate while you play the game. These are very basic and of course Christmassy, but I heard them playing in my head hours or days after I played the game. So to my own disbelief, the songs are definitely catchy.



Santa's Holiday has no Steam trading cards and no achievements.

I write reviews that are as in-depth as the game merits or allows. So this one will be short. Sarcophag is bad. The only reason to play it for a while is to get 5000 achievements that have a picture of letters and numbers so you can use them to compose a short message on your Steam profile. But even that has been done to death (see series like Zup!, Oik, Qop, and so on). So unless that's what you're looking for, avoid this piece of... er... software.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance (KCD) is an open-world action role-playing game (RPG) set in medieval Bohemia. This is a true RPG with focus on narrative, choices that matter, and character development. KCD offers the most realistic environment and gameplay I’ve ever seen in an action RPG, meaning you won’t encounter any fantasy creatures nor will you be able to survive a fight against half a dozen well-equipped opponents. So, if you’re looking for a hack-and-slash type of game where you can kill anything you encounter at any time, this game is not for you. If you’re looking for a captivating, realistic medieval role-playing experience, you may be in the right place.



You are Henry, the son of a blacksmith. Henry is a mischievous, carefree, somewhat naive young man who has no idea that his life is about to change radically when a warlord invades his homeland. Henry’s carefree life is completely and brutally taken away from him. As a result, Henry needs to find his place in the new order and learn how to cope with hostile and diplomatic situations alike.



Let’s start with the most debated aspect of KCD: combat. At first, Henry doesn’t know how to fight himself out of a wet paper bag. People expecting to go exploring and being able to kill every opponent Henry encounters in the large open world of KCD, will soon get a reality check. Henry is not a superhero. He’s a young man who barely ever handled a weapon before.

To get better at combat, Henry has to train his combat skills. By fighting with a sword, axe, mace or bow the respective weapon skill increases. Henry’s defense skill increases by blocking attacks.

Spamming a mouse or controller button will not get you far. You need to fight tactically by studying opponent behaviour and by learning to correctly execute ‘master blocks’ and ‘master strikes’, which Henry learns from an NPC he can spar with to hone his combat skills.

As soon as you have a decent grasp of how combat works, one-on-one fights won’t pose much of a problem. Fighting multiple opponents who surround you will always pose a problem. That’s KCD’s realism kicking in again.

Most of Henry’s stats and skills have perks that can be selected when Henry achieves the required level, further increasing his abilities. Besides true combat skills, Henry has other skills that complement his overall combat efficiency. For example, you can learn how to repair your equipment and add bonuses to the equipment in the process, e.g. padding armour so it makes less noise. This is very helpful when sneaking around.

Thieving skills (sneaking, lockpicking, pickpocketing) are also increased by performing them. KCD even has a noise and visibility system. This means that you’ll be sneakier when clad in dark clothes as opposed to noisy and shiny plate armor or brightly-colored clothes.

Henry can learn alchemy and brew potions. The more potions he brews succesfully, the more his alchemy skill increases. Most potions are situational and only handy in those situations, but some potions are simply great and give Henry a significant advantage in combat. Ingredients for potions can be found, looted or bought.

Several potions allow some creative uses. Let’s take poison as an example. You can coat your weapon with the poison, dealing a damage-over-time to everyone you hit with the weapon. You can sneak into a bandit camp at night, pour the poison in their cauldron, sneak away and wait for the bandits to wake up and have their laced breakfast. You can apply the poison to a piece of raw meat, lure a guard dog towards you, drop the meat and back away. The dog will eat the poisoned meat and die, so he won’t be alerting the inhabitants of a house you want to sneak into or the bandits whose camp you want to raid.

Henry can buy a horse. How well he can handle his horse depends on a skill and its perks, and on the quality of the tack Henry¬ has for his horse. Horses can also be outfitted with saddle bags, allowing Henry to carry more loot back to town to sell.

In most taverns you can play a fun minigame called Farkle, a strategic dice game. At first, Henry won’t win very often but after he manages to get a nice set of loaded dice, his chances will increase considerably.

You have to keep an eye on Henry’s hunger and energy levels. Hunger is countered by eating food. Energy is replenished by sleeping.

How people see you and treat you is determined by your charisma stat, by how impressive your outfit looks, and by your reputation in the town and with the particular NPC.

All of this barely scratches the surface of the KCD experience. There is so much to do, to see and to experience in this game I’m not even halfway through what I could tell you about the basics of KCD, but you get the general idea of what to expect.

There are only a few things I didn’t like about KCD:

• The reticle is always on your screen, except when you draw a bow… which is the only time you actually need a reticle! But I changed a setting in the game’s files to always have the reticle on my screen. You can also install a small mod to achieve the same.
  
  
• You can’t just save the game anytime you want. You can only save the game by sleeping in a bed that Henry owns or rents, or by drinking a savegame potion. But that potion contains alcohol, meaning you get penalties from being drunk, followed by penalties from having a hangover. Granted, there are other potions to counter this situation but I found it too much of a hassle so I installed a mod that allowed me to save whenever I want without the need for a potion.
  
  
• Henry can make WAY too much money WAY too easily. After only 15 or 20% into the game, I had more money than I could ever possibly spend. I tried to compensate it by always giving merchants the most money I could give them when making a deal (this increases your reputation with them) but I remained filthy rich for the rest of the game. There’s even a money sink DLC called From The Ashes, and even that hardly made a dent in Henry’s vast fortune.
  
  
• Because of the previous point, quest rewards are laughable. Your reward for every quest is a couple of hundred Groschen, whereas you have tens of thousands or even more than 100,000 Groschen. I did sidequests for some additional narrative and to be sent from here to there across the world map, but definitely not for the reward, which is a bit of a shame.

Depending on your hardware, KCD’s graphics can look really nice. But to run the game at ultra high settings, you need a high-end computer. KCD really pushes your hard drive to its limits in crowded towns, so an SSD is definitely recommended. You can download a free DLC to improve both the sound and the textures, which makes the game look and sound even better, but again you need some pretty good hardware to run the ‘HD textures pack’.

KCD’s music is wonderful. The songs sound great and they ooze the atmosphere of the era in which the game is set.

Voice acting in KCD is top-notch. The voice actors for the main NPCs really managed to add personality and character to their KCD personas.



KCD has 5 Steam Trading Cards. You'll get 3 while running the game.

The 82 Steam Achievements are very diverse. Some are unmissable, some are granted for doing optional stuff or for handling a quest in one particular way, some are combat-related (e.g. kill 50 opponents with a headshot). And then there are some achievements that present a real challenge, like finishing the game without killing anyone, or completing the game in hardcore mode with all of the penalties you can choose from when starting a hardcore game. What I don’t like is that the total of 82 achievements includes the achievements for all the DLC, so if you don’t buy all the DLC, you’ll never be able to add KCD to your list of perfect games.

Outward is a mix of survival game and open-world action RPG. I have over 200 hours of playtime for this game and I had a lot of fun with it, so you'd think a recommendation goes without saying. But it's not that simple. Outward is a genuine mix of two genres, meaning the game no longer fits either of them but it's the first game in a brand new genre.



A story isn't what you'll be playing Outward for. The narrative is extremely basic. You start the game with a family debt to resolve. You're told there are three factions in the world that can help you deal with your problem. So, off you go…

How the main quest plays out depends on which of the three factions you join and some choices you make during the game. But don't expect much storytelling from the main questline. Each of the faction's questline consists of just four quests that require only a few actions but require a LOT of running back and forth between locations in the four large zones of the game.

The side quests are laughable. They're scarce and almost all of them are repeatable Fed-Ex quests. There are only a few actual sidequests and I found their narrative and their rewards unsatisfying.



As for the 'survival' side of Outward, you'll have the following elements to take into account:
- weather: you need clothing, spells, food or potions to keep you warm or cold depending on the surroundings.
- hunger: you need to eat and you need to eat wisely because e.g. eating raw meat may cause disease, whereas eating cooked meat doesn't carry that risk. You can combine ingredients to create dishes that restore more health over time and may even add buffs to your character. All food rots over time.
- thirst: you need to hydrate. Water is abundant in most zones but only clean water is safe to drink. Sea water needs to be boiled over a campfire to extract the salt. The first time I drank river water, which sounded safe enough, I got an indigestion which needs to be cured by drinking a tea you can brew or buy from a merchant.
- sleep: you need to sleep regularly. When sleeping out in the wild, you have a chance to get ambushed while sleeping.
- no manually saving the game!

Running around while hungry, thirsty or sleepy will put a penalty on your stats. Running around while cold or hot will make you sick. Eventually, you'll die from these conditions if you don't treat them.

As for the 'open-world action RPG' side of Outward, you have quests, factions, choices that influence how the game plays out, merchants, skill trainers, dungeons (often with a boss monster), armor and weapons with stats, elemental damage and resistances, etc. The game is truly open world, meaning you'll encounter easy and hard monsters wherever you go, so you have to know when to fight and when to run, or which buffs may help you win the fight.

You have to decide which character build you want. There are 8 classes (+2 with the DLC). You can learn the first-tier skills of all the classes but you can learn second-tier and third-tier skills of only three classes. Also, there's a special skill for each weapon type. The problem with all this is that you only have 8 quickslots so you need to choose wisely which active skills you want access to during combat.

Outward offers the three basic types of combat: melee (one-handed, two-handed or one-handed with shield), ranged (bows and pistols) and magic (fire, ice, electric). You can specialize in one of these or create a hybrid build. Some weapon types seem to be much stronger than others but in the end everything goes. It all depends on your personal preferences: the character build you're going for and the weapon types that best fit your playstyle.

Outward has no XP or level up system. Silver, the game's currency, acts as your XP since it limits which skills you can 'buy' (learn) and what gear you can afford (buy or craft).

An essential aspect of Outward is crafting. You can craft weapons, armor, food and potions. There are tons of craftable items that offer great stats or buffs but the problem is your backpack has a limit to how much weight it can carry. So you need to choose wisely what to carry with you, taking into account what region of the game world you're going to. During your adventures, you'll find backpacks that can carry more weight but you'll always have to be picky about what to lug around.

There's no fast travel in Outward so preparing for the circumstances you may encounter in the area you're going to is key to your survival. Of course, you'll find resources while adventuring but not everything is always readily available and if you want to be able to prepare food or potions on the fly you'll need to carry a cooking pot and an alchemy set with you, both of which are heavy items.

Just as the survival aspect of the game isn't as fleshed out as full-fledged survival games, neither is the RPG aspect. Personally, I think Outward lacks quests. There are a couple of dozens of dungeons in the game, but if you just follow the quests, you'll only visit a few of them. Sidequests could be an incentive to actually explore a dungeon that is now left unexplored because the reward of tackling a frustratingly difficult dungeon doesn't outweigh the time nor the consumables it would take you to complete it.

Because of this, Outward is a game where you need to make your own adventures. If you're not into exploration of a game world when nothing or nobody requires you to explore most of that world, you'll finish the game in a couple of dozens of hours and you will only have seen maybe 20% of Outward. I'm hoping for a second installment of this game but I urge the developers to add more quests, inviting the player to explore more of the world they created simply by encouraging and rewarding the player for doing so.

Another thing I'd like to see in Outward 2 is XP rewards and a level system for our character. Mind you, to keep the game truly open world the level system wouldn't need to be elaborate or have a major impact. But it would encourage people to play longer and, once again, it would encourage players to explore more of the world. As it is now, I found myself having all the gear I wanted for my character build and having plenty of the very best consumables when I had barely explored half of the game world.



The graphics and animations are extremely serviceable for an indie game. I couldn't even believe this game was made with Unity. If Unity ever wants to run an ad showing people the limits of what their engine can do, Outward is definitely the game to show. It really looks like a game between AA and AAA, something I thought impossible to achieve using Unity after having played dozens of Unity-made games.

Outward's music is nice and atmospheric. The only minor downside would be that there are only 4 large zones (5 with the DLC) so the music can get repetitive but I never found it annoying.

Sound effects are top-notch for a Unity-based indie game, although there were some actions that produce no sound at all, which is probably due to time restraints or forgetfulness.



Outward has 6 Steam Trading Cards. You'll get 3 while running the game.

The 60 Steam Achievements are hard to 100%. First of all, a relatively large number of them (16) can only be unlocked if you own the DLC. Next, a decent number of them (16 again) require you to play through the game having joined each of the three factions, so it will require you three playthroughs to unlock all of them.

The remaining half of the achievements can be unlocked by just playing the game and performing some (optional) actions, except for a couple of challenging achievements that either require you to complete the game without dying once (near impossible) or force you to play co-op so as to heal a companion.

Haven't got around to playing this game and the new publisher would like me to pay more money for the same game but 'Remastered with stunning visuals and refined gameplay'

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1041720/Kingdoms_of_Amalur_ReReckoning/

Visually, it definitely does look better. As to the refined gameplay, the first impression comments I read about the Re-Reckoning version say the combat is less smooth than it was. All in all, it's clear I can't recommend this game (pretty much literally) so if you're looking into buying Kingdoms of Amalur, you want to check out the new version. If you already own this version of the game, as I do, I suppose there's nothing to see here anymore.

Zuma's Revenge is a Match 3 game of the arcade type, meaning you shoot balls (instead of swapping tiles on a board) to eliminate groups of three or more balls of the same color.

The balls slowly move towards their goal on the board. If even one of the balls manages to enter that goal, you lose a life and have to restart the level. If all of your lives are used up, you'll be back at the level where the game last saved your progress (more on that in a minute).

From time to time, a random power-up will appear on one of the balls. A power-up may allow you to destroy an area of balls by firing at them, reversing the flow of the balls for a few seconds, slowing down the flow of the balls for a short while, and so on.

Playing this game successfully requires speed and accuracy over thinking and strategy, and success depends for a large part on luck (RNG), which becomes more and more noticeable as the game progresses. If RNG keeps spawning strings of the same type of balls, you'll be able to finish the level without breaking a sweat. If the RNG gods are against you, you'll not only be replaying the same level over and over again, but often several levelS.

You see, the game only saves your progress every five levels or so, meaning that if you encounter a level you're having some difficulty completing, you'll often be forced to replay some previously cleared levels again and again, as well. As the game gets increasingly difficult and being able to win depends more and more on favourable RNG, I decided to quit at a certain point. I felt frustrated more than I felt entertained.

Zuma's Revenge looks alright; its graphics are basic but colorful and vivid. However, its music and sound effects are awfully repetitive.

I can't generally recommend Zuma's Revenge. Only people who are absolutely crazy about all games in this genre or who played the game when it was released 10 years ago and want to experience some nostalgia should consider buying this game. For anyone else who's looking into playing a game much like Zuma's Revenge but is a lot more fun to play in my opinion, check out Sparkle 2.

Zuma's Revenge has no Steam Trading Cards.

Most of the 14 Steam Achievements are very difficult to unlock and will require many hours of playtime and trial and error, being pitted against RNG. This game is very difficult to 100%.

Sparkle 2 is a Match 3 game of the arcade type, meaning you shoot balls (instead of swapping tiles on a board) to eliminate groups of three or more balls of the same color.

The game has 4 modes:
- Quest Mode: you travel across a map that leads to various places where you need to look for four keys, having to beat a match 3 level at each of the 92 steps on the map in order to progress.
- Survival Mode: 32 endless match 3 levels. The longer you can survive, the more stars you're awarded (up to 5 per level).
- Challenge Mode: 24 maps you each need to complete 3 or more times in order to complete the challenge. The difficulty increases gradually.
- Cataclysm Mode: 20 challenging levels to try and beat.

Every couple of levels you clear in the Quest Mode will unlock one of the other game modes, or the 'Hard' and 'Nightmare' difficulty for Quest Mode, or an enchantment. Enchantments are upgrades for your cannon. Your cannon has four slots and by the end of adventure mode, you'll have a choice of four boons for each slot. This means you can actually try and find a 'build' that works for you, which makes the game a personalized experience for each player.

While playing and eliminating groups of same-colored balls, every 3 succesful matches will spawn a power-up. Shooting these power-ups will activate them. The power-ups are varied, some giving you some form of instant major firepower or manipulating the balls' speed or color.

All in all, I had a lot of fun playing Sparkle 2. Also, with all of its game modes and difficulties, there are a ton of hours of playtime here if you want to get everything done.

Sparkle 2's graphics look fine. Although they're basic, they are colorful and vivid. The music sounds good and it doesn't get annoying, even after playing for a couple of hours. Sound effects are clear and crisp.

Sparkle 2 has 15 Steam Trading Cards. You'll get 8 while running the game.

Ten of the 14 Steam Achievements will unlock by playing through the adventure mode. The remaining four are a lot more difficult to achieve. They require completing the adventure mode on 'hard' and 'nightmare' difficulty, and completing and acing the 'Survival' and 'Challenge' game modes. Cataclysm Mode was added to the Steam version by means of an update, so that's probably the reason there isn't an achievement connected to that mode.