Fallen Tree makes great games. I've played through the Quell series a few times so this was an Instabuy for me. Really enjoying it so far.
Couldn't have said it better. If you haven't yet, you HAVE to download this. Fallen Tree never seems to disappoint...
I love Quell, so I had to get this. I'm so happy I did. Wonderful graphics and audio. Production value is through the roof. Put me down for a vote for an endless mode.
I'm not a match game person but agree with everyone else. Excellent production values, lots of unique mechanics. I'm still trying to figure out how people get scores so far above mine on the first map. 1. Can a 'retry' button for normal & hard game modes? 2. Can color blind mode be added? Challenge 6 red & 'grey' blocks, all of which looked red to me. I beat the level through trial and error. 3. Is there a way to see high score for each level without having to replay each level? I want to quickly see my friends scores so I know which levels I have to go back and play to stay ahead. Thanks for the considerations. Nice job devs!
So do the levels change if you go back ? Or are the puzzles always the same ? I'm asking for replay ability sake
Instant buy because of the developer's amazing pedigree! Update #1: I like the challenge mode much better than the random mode. As the name of the mode implies, the random mode requires chance to succeed in beating a level objective, even you are playing optimally. Initially, I also tried to seen if the tiles, despite being random, are allocated in such a way that you will always be able to make at least one match. This turns out not to the case, so that you can lock yourself out in a deadend even if you are making all of the "correct" moves. As well, the scoring favors having a full complement of power-ups, because the bonus points you get for them is much more than the penalty you take for using up your moves. Therefore, in some situations, if you want a higher score, you will deliberately play less optimally and use up more moves just to stock up on power-ups. I find this trade-off contrary to spirit of the game of being "efficient". The challenge levels are much more fun, in my opinion. However, the stacking-matching mechanics have been done in many other games, so I am waiting to see what the "new" twist is in this game that may appear in later levels of this mode (I am still very early on in the game). Also, the "par" move values are NOT necessarily the "minimum" number of moves needed to solve the levels. It is possible to solve a level "under par". An example is Spoiler Challenge-16 . It can be solved in 6 moves (par is 11). Unsure if this is intentional on the developer's part or an oversight by the developer on a missed alternate solution.
Hey guys I'm one of the developers, and it's great to hear that you are enjoying it! We follow TouchArcade religiously, so thanks for all the comments, we really appreciate it. To answer some questions: Sure, is there a color that you could recommend we change the grey to, in color-blind mode, or would it need to be a different shape/pattern? We asked friends before release, but there was no real consensus! Currently, only by launching GameCenter from the main menu. But this is a good suggestion, we will try to add an in-game method of browsing. So we added the Skip level option (if you fail a level 3 times) for this reason as we didn't want anyone to miss out on content that they had paid for. But it looks like skipping Y doesn't unlock Hard mode, as you've clearly found out, so sorry about that, it wasn't the intention and we'll fix in the next update. We are working on endless mode, just tuning it now!
Bought this the other day after the TA article and I've got to say that it's amazing. Seriously anyone with a vague interest in match 3 games should be on this like a ferret up a drainpipe.
Hi Joe, Good question, I've never thought about what actually makes it hard to distinguish so I did some searching and found this article. It explains the issue as difficulty in distinguishing shades of colors that are similar, particularly in brightness values. Adding a pattern would definitely make a difference, but I'd hate it to affect the visual style you've created by making it too 'busy'. Perhaps adjusting brightness values/intensity of the colors to make the variance between them greater would work and not impact the current visual style? Thanks for your attention!
I've tried Z3 a few dozen times already and can barely even scratch the surface. I don't even come close to completing it. I see only 8 people showing up on the leaderboards for that level. Is it possible it's *too* hard? Edit: Of course, just after I post this, I finally manage to beat it. :/
Update #2: Finished all 75 challenge levels (no hint). Excellent puzzles overall. A few of them were very clever and very satisfying to solve. Also, most unexpectedly, found a quite few alternative underpar solutions (this is, the levels are solvable using less number of moves as suggested by the par value). Great twist on classic match-3 mechanics. Can anyone tell me why some of the "circle" tiles (those that you press to vanish) have four dots in the corners of the tile (one in each corner)? I don't see their behavior different from other "circle" tiles that do not have the dots?
I love the Quell series and have 100% completed them so I had high hopes for this game. Perhaps too high. The music and art style does not appeal to me but that might be just personal preference. I really wish there was a landscape option since I find games harder to play in portrait on my iPad. I don't understand the high scores of the main game. On levels I feel I do bad on I got a better score, in fact I got first place on the global leader boards on one first try and not really sure why. Does it reward you for lasting longer on a level assuming you can make matches without completing the objective? Also if the levels are randomly generated doesn't the high score depend largely on luck? So far I have enjoyed the challenge mode much more. It reminds me of the puzzle mode on Tetris Attack. Overall worth a dollar but not my favorite.
That's why I'm looking forward to the endless mode more. I hope the scoring will make more sense. I also am not enjoying the Hard mode as much as I thought I would. They feel like they *should* be endless, but instead have an arbitrary goal and if you lose, you get nothing for your efforts.
I am struggling with the freeform mode, especially when compared to how clever the challenge mode was. The mode depends largely on chance, and skills matter little relative to it. The constraint of certain objective is so tight that you can lose even you are playing expertly just because the tile allocations are poor.
I am about half way through the Hard levels and have had to restart some of them many many times before I was successful completing them. I am enjoying the challenge of it.
Nice job, slewis7. I, too, have found the need to restart a level many, many times. However, even if I eventually beat a level, the victory felt empty as I know it was more chance than skills that I was able to do so. This experience differs greatly from the challenge mode in which the levels are only dependent on skills (plays more than Quell). It feels that I am just going through the "motion". Very odd coming from such a developer.
I admit that some of the Hard levels are brutal, due to the amount of obstacles and padlocked skulls some can start with. On those, if you get bad luck in the opening moves, then it's tricky to recover. Once you clear a few of those obstacles though, I think skill becomes much more important again. But I can only really judge this based off my play-style, and of course I've played it a LOT, so that's probably not typical!
