I like a nice match-3 game with RPG elements. Dr. WHO, Puzzle Quest, 10000000, Hexic all have sucked copious amounts of my waiting time over the years. Take a little move the pieces to make color, item matches and see things blow up and add some battle trappings and power-ups and we are going to have a good time. That made it very easy for Spellfall™ - Puzzle RPG (Spellfall) from Backflip Studios - free on iTunes - to jump right onto my iPad mini.
Spellfall is set in a fantasy world where spellfall has started and monsters are pouring out to take over the land and only duskwalkers (like you) can cast the spells needed to stop them. You cast spells by matching elements on the game board by swapping elements (fire, water, air, electricity, plant) or collect coins. String together more than 3 tiles and you can get powered up elements that can change all the tiles around them when matched. There are also glowing tiles that when matched will give you a special attack. The element structure also comes into play since monsters may be weak to one element or another. You get a certain number of moves before the monster will attack. Monster attacks will lower your hit points, run out and you lose the battle.
In addition to the basic mechanics of swapping and matching tiles, you have equipment you can bring into each battle - armor and weapon - that can also have runes equipped that will give you further power-ups. Equip a heal rune and you can power it up by matching water tiles allowing you to eventually cast a heal and recover hit points in the middle of a battle. You can only have one active rune at a time, so its best to switch to the one you want to power before you make a move on the board.
Being free to play, the main timer in Spellfall is your hit points. If you are low, you can just wait a while and they will recover. Luckily this is not an all at once type recovery and you can choose how long to wait before proceeding to the next battle. You can also spend some of the coins you earn to heal quickly. Coins are pretty easy to come by as you can get them in your battles as well as from areas of the world you have already cleared of monsters. I am only a few areas (about 50 battles) into the game but I am always hovering about 10,000 coins. Coins are also used to buy equipment (which comes in different rarities - of course) and runes from the store - you unlock new items in the store by defeating monsters (one per battle). The inventory rotates so things are constantly entering and leaving the store.
There is a lot of customization you can make to your equipment depending on the runes and items you equip. During battles you also earn experience and rune points that help level you and your runes up. The further along you get into the game, you will run into monsters too tough for you. If so, you can always go back and redo battles you had previously completed to get more experience. The longer the game goes on, monsters can retake areas you have already cleared. Re-clearing them will be harder but give better rewards.
You can play through Spellfall just mindlessly matching tiles, but the real benefit is through deciding the right equipment for the monster you are fighting and carefully deciding which rune to have active before you move. The way Spellfall is monetized is the typical - spend money to get more equipment or to retry a battle ($0.99 per) if you lost. Some items are outrageously expensive (see the $79.99 price per Claideahm sword), but I recommend you avoid them as the one I have doesn't seem to make that much of a difference in battles. To help you get items without spending cash, the game also offers you a mystery box containing one item for free per day. There are also rewards for login in each day - get 20 days in a row and get a Claideahm sword.
Spellfall is a fun match-3 with RPG elements. A lot of work has been put into adding depth in the strategy of equipping your character and choosing which load out to use against each monster. There are also 3 save slots in the game in case you want to run different games on the same device. While not quite at the level of some of the games I mentioned at the start of this review, Spellfall gets 3.5 Mick Happies.
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