Honestly, that's the FIRST match-3 game that i EVER disliked... i regretted purchasing Kalevala... Bored me to death so damn quickly =/ i completed the first world and that's that.... never played again, never looked back... so im still trying to figure out what was it that people liked about it.
lol it happens my favorite match 3 game is 7 Wonders: Magical Mystery Tour, followed by Butterfly Mode on Bejeweled 3 xD if you count Azkend, i fell in love with the first one. But Kalevala?..... A dark chapter in my iOS gaming days ._.
Another copy sold without needing to see the lite, and count me as another continuing customer, too. This game is a textbook example of how to build an App Store following. Well done, Clockwork Pixels.
Well, not to split the room here, but Kalevala is one of my favorites and I honestly got bored to death of 7 Wonders: MMT almost instantly. >_>
Ahh forgot to add Call of Atlantis... that one made me get to work late quite a few times xD And from what I've played, imma have to add Kitten Sanctuary to my list of favorites
Game Impressions Ontopic: Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel Offtopic: I can`t believe you Guys haven`t mentioned Azkend (One & Two) so far.
I wanted to call attention to another similar release that performed differently: Simplz Zoo. It had very similar mechanics, and even a micro game outside of the match 3 where you build a zoo. The main reason I picked it up was because I'd played the PC version before and had a lot of fun with it. It was even released for free, but with some IAPs compared to this game having none. At first release, however, I had issues with it crashing on my device, and after replying, the dev came back once, after three days, to ask me how I reproduced it. But then they never returned to talk about possible solutions. The thread fell into obscurity, and so did the game. I think the dev's non-responsiveness, coupled with a theme that wasn't as engaging, and a less forgiving IAP model, killed its initial impression. But I think it was really the dev being non-responsive. Or maybe people thought it was another freemium "build a zoo/town/village/etc"! game. Hm. Regardless, kudos to the dev for being so great so far. I think other people in this kind of business can learn from their response (compared to the other game) and how they've handled this. Anyway, this game is going into my library alongside Pet Shop Girl and Warna...two great Match-3s that exude polish and content. Really surprised by this gem.
xD read up on my last few posts Side Note: Playing "Tricky" gives a Star... but what about "Dynamic"? Does that affect anything? Another star or an achievement?
Kalevala suffered from looking (and playing, really) like one of those Playrix cookie cutter Match-3s. Aside from that there was nothing wrong with it, really. Super polished and uninspired to match.
Flawed design for Tricky Mode? No matter how many tiles I clear, the new tiles NEVER fall into the top right corners of the puzzle and I keep losing. I was really having a nice time playing Tricky Mode, now it's more of a frustration. Every tile on the board is RED or YELLOW and I don't get the 1/2 time star ever with Tricky Mode.
Hi Justln, thanks for letting me know ... I redesigned the levels to work on the iPhone's screen (this won't happen on the iPad as it uses the original levels) and obviously I missed that on tricky mode. It's *not* a show stopper though ... 1) You can slide tiles into empty spaces, so it's still possible to make matches in the corners and remove the reds ... it's an extra challenge maybe? ; ) 2) You can use your Kitten Power to remove awkward tiles, that'd certainly take care of them! I've removed the offending squares for the update, and will of course recheck each level for tricky mode ... thank you. It's a tricky thing balancing the timings of each level (there's a fine line between challenging and frustrating) and I may have gone overboard, easy to do when you're playing the game every day ... I'll certainly have a look at this for the update. Loving the feedback, thank you ... will write more soon : )
There are just two stars per level (Tricky & Expert) ... Dynamic only changes the way the tiles fall. I originally coded the game so that tiles would get squeezed out of columns. I hadn't played many match 3 games at that point and soon realised this is not the way players expect tiles to fall, they were to unpredictable! So, I adopted the "Universal Match 3 Tile Falling Protocol" and left the original code in as the Dynamic option ... I like the way they fall in Dynamic, always reminds me of playing Boulder Dash : D
A couple pages ago, before everyone got off-topic talking about other games, I asked this on-topic question which has so far gone unanswered: Any plans to add user profiles, so different people can play the same app on the same device? Or is that already in the full version? Thanks!
Sorry, I need to go through the pages and pick up on the posts I've missed. I will be adding profiles. I actually took them out of the game thinking they'd be unnecessary, but I've had a few requests now. I think I'll code them like the old SNES games, so there'll be 3-4 slots which you can select, each will show the current progress. Thanks : )
