Hello all, I am Frost and going to start with the game Thor Blitz, by one man developer Heitor Barcellos.
Basically, Thor Blitz is a match-3 game and its obviously inspired by the nordic god of thunder, Thor, who is at war with the Olympus.
The game plays as a normal match-3 game, theres falling pieces and you have to match them on the bottom of the screen, having multiple pieces like triangles, squared blocks, diamonds and more, a lot more. The sword on top releases the pieces, always falling in groups of 2. You control the sword by tilting your iDevice. While the pieces are falling, and by the way to do it really fast, i heard 1.1 fixed this, but i wish it could be slower, being sometimes frustating at later levels… you have to drag them wherever you want to place them, if you can, and lets you flip the pieces on mid air on once placed on the gound, but you have limited moves, because theres a bar shaped like a sword that limits your moves, making your brain work faster. The point here, as many other match-3 games is to “form horizontal, vertial or L-shaped chains of three or more pieces”… also, you can make combos with 4+ chains to collect Diamonds, if you collect the required 3 diamonds, you will cast a super power called Thunderbolt, wiping out the screen. While this is the bigger combo possible, theres also lower one like earth or aqua combos (is all about making combos to survive), all being flashy and bringing some effects to enlighten it a bit although the game looks solid, in full Retina Display.
The game has some depth, because you gain experience, gaining levels (and here is where the God of War influence kicks in), and some levels brings you new powers and adding runes, actually being like normal pieces, to the mix, ramping the difficulty up quite a little as you progress. I wish there could be some explanations for each of them, like Pigs on Trees, who does an outstanding job at that because they just show you the piece, leaving you wondering what it does. Some of them to help you, like Mjölnir, Thors hammer, that wipes an entire line or the multi-metal can, who can be combined with anything… also added are other regular pieces, called Runes to add more difficulty to mix them together. There are also bad powers, like the Hades Touch, inverting controls.
There two game modes and a tutorial. The game modes is Story and Ragnarok, the fist one being the normal game, unlocking runes and progression through levels and the latter is a endless survival mode with everthing unlocked from the beginning and is quite challenging. The tutorial could be more explanatory with the power-ups , but i guess the dev wants to surprise you while playing… Replayability is good because you want to see whats ahead, and unlock new runes and powers, so this gives this game a “one more time” appeal. Theres also one leaderboard with your total points for both modes to compare youself with the rest of the world, and 6 achievements.
I think you have already have an idea of this game in mind, but you dont know how it controls… well, an update just hit the AppStore, bringing bug fixes, a shiny new icon and calibration, and all they are welcomed and much needed. Now tilting works, it has been finely tweaked, but to our behalf, because before was so slow and now its perfect, fast and precise. Dragging works well, but sometimes in later levels, when you have all those runes and pieces and the pace is getting up, some pieces will swap by mistake. And by the way, dragging hasnt been completely fixed like tilting. It still needs some work, but if you are into this match 3 games, you will ignore it completely and have a good time with this Thor Blitz. So if you are a harcore fan of the genre and craving for your next game, this may be your new game, for $0.99 is already a bargain given the hours and hours you will dive into it.
iTunes link:
Here are some promo codes for the fastest to enjoy:
TTNELWE4YR9Y
EWWJR7E33YPJ
W7HFWRLXWFW7
EWWJR7E33YPJ
W7HFWRLXWFW7
If you werent fast enough to get a promo code, we will give one more away in our Twitter giveaway, follow us at @TheAppShack
Please remember to leave an iTunes review with whatever you really think about this game, Also you can check their website for any more games from this developer at hbstark.com