My impressions of Triple Town (sort of a review)

[Mivo]

Triple Town is a match-three game paired with simplistic city building elements that requires more strategic thinking than games in this genre usually do.

The game is easy to learn and pretty hard to put away. The premise is simple: You start with a somewhat empty board, the "city", and then receive one component per turn, which you need to place on the board. Three of the same kind result in one piece of the next higher tier. For example, three bunches of grass give you a bush, and three (or more) bushes connected horizontally or vertically give you a tree.

The tricky part is that the resulting item appears in the spot where you put the previous item, and this is where the strategy originates from. Not only do you need to create matches on a small board, you also need to plan ahead so that future pieces fit together and you can upgrade to, say, a castle. Matching the highest tiers will grant you a treasure chest. with random loot.

Depending on the mode you play in (the game offers several with individual rulesets), there will also be bears. Bears wander around the board and turn into tombstones when you trap them. Three tombstones can be matched for a church (which does give you points) and three churches give you a cathedral. Building those is extra hard because the bears move around and trapping them may require you to clutter the board.

To make it easier, you are given a storage spot where you can swap and keep one item, and there are special components such as the bot (that removes any item from the board) and the gem (which works like a joker). There is also a shop where you can purchase items and components with gold that you get by making larger matches. This is strictly in the game, there are no in-app purchases or DLC.

The other element of the game is your permanent capital city where you can place grain fields, military buildings, etc. which yield resources. These, too, can be matched and thus upgraded. If you play well, the game gives you rewards that can be put down in your capital.

Overall, Triple Town is a deeper-than-it-looks match-3 game that gets quite addictive (further made "worse" by there being achievements!). It's a friendly game that does not get stressful (it's all turn-based). Sadly, while the iOS version got ratings in the 80s and 90s, the identical PC version scored much lower. Different audiences, I guess.

I enjoy it, but I do like match-3 ganes, turn-based strategy and puzzlers. :)

[Carthes]

Well written review, gives me a better idea of what the game is like than the video. It does seem like a game developed for mobile, but perhaps at the price point (before sale) of a PC game, people's expectations are different. The inverse would be true on mobile; low expectations of gaming experiences, but low prices?

The deepest match-three puzzle game I enjoyed was Puzzle Quest 1... the second one and the other games by the same studio were greatly anticipated but didn't end up being the same level of enjoyment, for some reason.

[Void Arson]

Well said, I wish there were more laid back games like this around.

[noisycat]

Thanks for the well written review! I always try and explain this game to friends and I think in the future I'll just point them here, haha :)