Giveaway of the Day - Enchanted Cavern

In Brief:

Enchanted Cavern is a standard ‘group’ match three; basically you click on groups of three or more tokens to remove them and their underlying tiles from the arena. to complete a level you have to remove all underlying tiles. It has reasonable graphics a small story line and the usual bonus items such as bombs and line destructors . The game is timed with no untimed mode. The usual Game Giveaway installation issues prevails such as no desktop shortcut, you’ll need to make a note of where it’s installed too (C:/Games?) so that you can create your own desktop shortcut.

I’ve read loads of users comments from several gaming sites who say the game gets progressively harder. One user said it took them 2 years playing regularily to complete the game despite there only being 47 levels.

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Finally the completed review

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Enchanted Caverns I:

Installation:

Today’s game downloads to a 27.4MB zip file and unpacks to a read me doc with the terms and conditions and instructions

The game installs to C:\Games by default and is 22.3MB in size once unpacked. There are no shortcut installed to either the desktop ot the start menu/programs list nor any uninstaller so make a note of where it is installed to. To uninstall just delete the installed game folder (unless you’re using programs like Revo. You can select your own installation path if you wish.

I’ve not tested it on all my computers. Most are offline at the moment awaiting various repairs. It works on a Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit and a Win 7 Pro 64 bit and a Vista 32 bit laptop.

Introduction:

The entrance to the cave is dark and foreboding, causing you to question whether or not you should step through its mouth. But you know a treasure of untold value can be found inside, so you take a deep breath and enter the labyrinth. The moment you cross from daylight into darkness, your eyes behold an amazing sight: the walls of the cave are lined with thousands of glittering jewels!
By matching groups of three or more precious stones, you’ll be able to work your way toward your goal. Featuring exhilarating gameplay, stunning visuals and special logic challenges that will test your mental mettle, Enchanted Cavern is a journey the entire family will enjoy!

Reference accessed HERE Sept 2012

The Game:

Enchanted cave is a reasonable ‘group’ match three game. The first few levels are unremarkable and can be quickly completed in times that will rank you as a Master player. As you progress things do start to get more interesting and much harder. by the second stage of the game levels are much harder to solve. I’ve read that many players who’ve written in to several gaming forums say that level 2:7 is almost impossible to beat. I say if you use the bonus tokens wisely these level shouldn’t be a sticking point. It will be interesting to see if any community members get to this stage before the day is out. i managed to get to the second level in well under an hour. (Didn’t have time to play much further due to a family member being hospitalized (fractured hip) To remove tiles from the playing arena you have to click on groups of three or more tokens that lay on top of the tiles. When starting the game for the first time you are given the opportunity to either keep or turn off hints; leaving them on will give you hints whenever a new bonus item or other change to the game occurs. Levels are timed. As with most match threes of this type there are bonus items such as bombs, line destructors, both vertical and horizontal as well as both together. There’s also color destructors; when you get a color destructor they destroy all tokens of the same color on the board. All of these bonus items can be used to destroy awkward to get at tokens, usually those in corners or at the bottom of the playing arena. . To activate a bonus token just include it in the match selection. Be careful where you click, random clicking will result in time being deducted from the total time left to complete the level.

At the end of each level you get a stats table telling you what level you have mastered for example Master, Advanced, Expert, apprentice. These titles are based on how quick you complete the level. The less time you have the lower the rank.

The four images above show the various stages you’ll see as you progress through the first set of 11 levels

At the end of each level there is a short animation based around the environment you are in at the time. there are four different environments, each one taking around 11 levels to complete (level 1:1 to 1:11) ; for example the first environment is based around a dead tree surrounded by four stone columns. objects appear on these columns as you progress then the tree is zapped by energy from these objects and is brought back to life. The cycle of a day passes on the animation and the moon rises. you are then awarded your first crystal. The second environment is then shown and you start at level 2:1. Each new environment also includes a new set of background tiles, each one a different color to its predecessor. The first levels tiles are brown, the second levels tiles aquamarine, the third set of levels (3:1 to 3:11) are a mixture of brown and aquamarine. I’ve not seen the last set of levels yet.

Every firth level you get a bonus puzzle level which is solved by clearing the playing arena of all tokens. Basically you have to ensure you get rid of the tokens in the correct order. The first couple from section 1 are relatively easy, for example (SPOILER ALERT) in the second puzzle you clear them by firstly removing the lower pink tokens, then the yellow, green and lastly the upper pinks.

Other things to note are the chained tokens, these are first introduced in level 1:4. As with most games these are introduced once you’ve played a few levels. There are two types of chained tokens, single and double chained, double chained tokens are introduced in level 1:7. you need to match three times to destroy the double chained tokes and twice for the single chained tokens. There are also monoliths which can be removed by removing matches next to them. (you’ll find these are first introduced in level 1:8. Later on you will come across levels with areas outside of the main arena that seem almost impossible to complete. this is where strategy come in. Saving color destructors and other bonus items that enable you to set off bonus items in these trapped areas.

Puzzle Level

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Video & Images:

You can see videos for Enchanted Cavern HERE, HERE and HERE

I’ve uploaded images to photobucket which show you hints, three of the different environments and the main menu. You can see HERE as a slideshow.

Conclusion:

Overall Enchanted Caverns is a reasonable ‘group match three’ that’s distinguished not much by originality but more for its difficulty. You will need to use strategy to beat this just clicking at random matches will not allow you to beat the timed levels. As the game progresses towards the final stage (stage 4) the game increases in difficulty. for those who enjoy a challenge this is a perfect group match three. If you easily get frustrated or prefer games with an untimed mode I think you’ll find this game a nightmare; still, i would recommend you stick at it.

The animations were okay and the music although a little powerful in places (I much prefer something more laid back) was acceptable (though I think some will hate it), the tempo of the music changing as you approached the end of time was a nice touch.

I do think the tokens were a little bland. something more distinctive and easier to see bonus tokens, rather than the hard to make out bonus tokens that are present at this time. It’s hard to see the symbols on each token (especially for those with fading vision (anyone 50 plus, lol) Still this will be a keeper for me. I scored it a reasonable 6.8 based on five categories which you can see below.

Score:

Overall I’d give this game the following score:
Game play – 7
Graphics – 7
Music – 7
Replayability – 7
Originality – 6
Total = 34 out of 50 which equates to 6.8 out of 10

Stage 2 environment

Stage 3 Environment

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Alternative Games almost for Free:
You will find loads more free games posted in the Game Discussion forums, plus there’s loads of very cheap bundle deals available at this time (most are finished over the next three or four days and you’ve just missed an excellent Space Bundle)
You can check out the bundle deals that are available at the moment over in the forums. They are all on the front page of the game discussion forums (see link above). The Indie Royale OktoberFest has just been released, there’s also Indie Gala 9 (ends Oct 3rd), Humble Bundle 6 (ends 2nd Oct), Indie Face Kick bundle ends at 1am GMT tomorrow) and the Indie fort bundle (ends 1st Oct, with three different bundles to choose from). You’ll find the following games (in no particular order )

1) …. Indie Face Kick

Adams Venture, Desert Gunner, Hard Truck Apocalypse, Helforces, Operation Matriarchy, The Entente: Battlefields WWI.

2) …. Gamersgate Indie Fort Bundle

3079, A Sirius Game, Air Buccaneers HD, Black Market, Blue Libra, Cel: Emergence, Dark Scavenger, Dead End Cerebral Vortex, DEMISE: Ascension, Devil Whiskey, Girl with a Heart of, Hacker Evolution: Duality, Influence, Orbitron: Revolution, Pe-2 Dive Bomber, Sentinel 3: Homeworld, Shepherd Slaughter, Star Prospector, Survivors of Ragnarök, Telepath RPG: Servant of God, Tiny and Big: Grandpa’s…., Will fight for Food, Zombie Football Carnage

3) …. Humble Bundle 6

Rochard, Shatter, Space Pirates & Zombies, Torchlight, Vessel, Dustforce, Bit.Trip Runner, Gratuitous Space Battles, Jamestown and Wizorb.

4) …. Indie Gala 9

Battlegroup, Call of Cthulhu, Worms, Alien Bred 2: Assault, Broken Sword 1-3, Worms Blast, Worms Crazy golf, Worms Pinball, Alien Breed 3: Decent.

5) …. Indie Royale: OktoberFest Bundle

Hector: Badge of Carnage, Chime, The Adventures of Shuggy, Dangerous high School Girls in Trouble, The Network, The witches Yarn.

You can get most of the above bundles for as little as $1 up to several dollars. Overall there’s some excellent games to chose from. I highly recommend Humble Bundle 6

It seems that there’s always at least one or two bundles on the go all the time now; what, with the Humble bundles, Indie Royale Bundles, Indie Gala bundles, Groupee Be Mine and Build a bundle bundles, Indie Face Kick be in your Face bundles , Indivania bundles plus others i.e. Elf Squad, Frozenbytes, AGS Bake, Indie Underdog Bundle in a Box, Operation Gratitude, Quadtastic, Indie Fort and Strategy first bundles, not to mention the bundles available over on Steam occasionally. by the way you can play Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 for free all weekend (till Sunday 9pm GMT/1pm Pacific time)and, if you decide to purchase it there’s a 50% discount on till Monday afternoon. Today’s 24 hour deal is Tiny & Big in Grandpa’s Leftovers a comic style jump and slice platformer (slice meaning the environments are destructible) for only £4.99. (This game is also included in the Gamersgate Indie Fort bundle listed above (#2)) There’s also a brilliant Total War sale on with al but the first two in the series (Total War: Shogun and total War Medieval) included, though none of the DLC is included, which could set you back £50 if you purchased it al. Se my post over in the forums about this deal. for £24. 98 you can purchase the Mater edition that includes Total Rome: Total War Gold, Medieval 2 Total War, Empire: Total War, Napoleon: total War, Total War: Shogun 2, Total War: Shogun 2 Fall of the Samurai and the latest a conversion from android phones to PC Total War Battles: Shogun. You can purchase the oldest in this pack – Rome: Total War Gold for £1/$1
If you’ve heard of Half Life 2, you’ll have heard of Black Mesa. Well a group of modders have been working on a free standing mod that uses a free version of the source engine. Now you can get Half Life Black Mesa for free. You’ll find details HERE .
Finally, there’s a new indie site called HERE, where every four days a new indie game will be put up. You can purchase it with the ‘pay what you want’ model (minimum $1). After the four days it goes into the shop where you’ll pay the usual price. Today’s four day deal is called Escape Goat, which changes over around 3am tomorrow (GMT). You can find it HERE

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Problems:

If you have any problems with the game, either installation issues or getting the game to work check out the FAQ’s section over in the Game discussion forums. you can find it HERE

Request for Help:

Developers rely on good feedback to improve their games. If you download this game please take some time once you’ve played it a while to leave some constructive feedback either positive or negative. The more constructive feedback we get, the more likely developers are going to give more games away. The giveaway site already has a very good standing with the search engines. Developers want their products out there on the WWW, this site has the potential to do that. The game giveaway project gives away on average between 9 to 17 thousand downloads for each game depending upon what genre and how obscure the game is. That’s a lot of homes these games are being downloaded into and a lot of ‘potential’ cash that’s being lost by the developers. If we get better games because of better feedback, the community are likely to continue to benefit from the generosity of the developers. Satisfied community members are then more likely to visit the home sites of those developers and purchase games that they may not have bothered with before they discovered the developer via the game giveaway site, thus giving the developers more incentives to give away even more decent games.

Please leave some feedback once you’ve checked the game out. It can be positive or negative, but please explain what your reasons were for the feedback you post. You could also leave suggestions for improving the game, for example, this game could do with more block types for the levels editor, add more power-ups, describing the ones you think would be suitable, add some mini games (which seem all the rage in some arcade games now) or enable the user to be able to change the in game music easily.

Thank you in advance to all those who take the time to post a constructive comment.

Regards

Whiterabbit aka Stephen

A very nice match 3 game. This is not my favorite type of game but it’s fun to play if you have some time to fill. It’s an Alawar game so you know it’s going to be done right. And there is no installation. Just unzip the game folder any place you like on your computer. no annoying icons added to your desktop, no annoying start up items added to your start menu. Nice job. Thank you GGAOTD team for your efforts. And thank you Alawar Entertainment for your offering. BTW if you can still do it, you may want to add the Alawar Game Box to your computer. It offers free games so it’s worth the effort.

…………………………Moderator comment…………………….

Thank you for your feedback. The present game box game is Sprill. It should be changing soon as it’s been up for more than a month. You can get the game box which is basically a client app for Alawar games via the link below. You can also add all your other arcade games to. Makes it easy to see all of your games in one place:

http://company.alawar.com/technologies/a_player.php