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Starting this Thursday, March 28, and running until Wednesday, April 3, you can play The Elder Scrolls Online free on all platforms, plus you can get the third game in the series i.e. Morrowind, totally free until Sunday 31st March. The first two (Arena & Daggerfall) are also free (permanently) via Bethesda. Also available to play for free until Sunday evening is the racing game Dakar. Please check the end of this review for more details and links to the deals.

Jewel Quest Heritage

In Brief

Jewel Quest Heritage is the fourth in the series and is a multi mode match three game.

Introduction:

Hit the trail with Rupert on a journey through the shrines and castles of Hernan Cortes' lore. Swap jewels and collect puzzle pieces to unravel a perplexing web of family history in Jewel Quest Heritage. The Golden Jewel Board has been confiscated by the government, and is being delivered to the evil Sebastian Grenard! Investigate long-buried family secrets in order to discover the truth and save the day!

Reference accessed HERE. 30th March 2019

Installation:

Jewel Quest Heritage downloads to a 129 MB zip file that unzips to three files, (a setup.gcd security wrapper the set-up file and a read me). The game installs to the following path by default, but can be changed if you wish. The installed game is approximately 134 MB in size.

C:\Program Files (x86)\MyPlayCity.com\Jewel Quest Heritage

Four shortcuts are installed to the desktop; the shortcut to the game, plus three others ''Play Online Games, MyPlayCity Games and a shortcut to a free online game. These latter three shortcuts can be deleted once the game has been installed. The Themida wrapper may alert your security and even block the installation; there are details about this issue in the read me that unpacks from the downloaded zip file.

The Game:

In the aptly titled Jewel Quest: Heritage, Rupert’s arch-rival Sebastian Grenard has stolen the Golden Jewel Board, claiming it as a family heirloom. In order to prove that the board is rightfully his, Rupert must trace the origins of the Jewel Board all the way back to the Aztec Empire while investigating his own family tree to see how the history of the jewel board is intertwined with the lives of his own ancestors.

The fourth game in the gem-swapping match-3 series features the same core gameplay as its predecessors. The goal is to match three or more jewels to clear them from the board and turn the tiles below to gold. the board is complete when all the tiles are turned to gold before the allotted time limit runs out.

There are a couple of new board types this time around, including a Limited Jewels mode where there are only so many jewels available to complete the board before they stop appearing; and a Swap Mode where you have a limited number of moves (as well as a time limit) to complete a board, but may swap two jewels even if no match is created. There are 170 boards in total, and an Expert mode to unlock as well.

Where Jewel Quest III grouped the jewel boards into geographic regions, each of which introduced a new twist into the game play (such as ice blocks or evil monkey head jewels), Heritage takes a different approach by arranging the boards along a vast family tree that starts with Rupert’s daughter Natalie and goes backwards through hundreds of years of Rupert’s ancestors.

Each family member appears as an info card that gives some background about the person and a handful of puzzles to complete. For each jewel board completed you earn a puzzle piece that can be used to help unlock earlier ancestors – and new jewel boards.

The difficulty level on the jewel board challenges gradually increases the higher up you go on the family tree, with new twists regularly added into the mix like indestructible blocks, locked spaces, buried jewels and ice blocks. Board layouts become more fiendish and finicky too.

The family tree affords a more open-ended feel than the world map approach, given that you’re free to swap between family members (and, by extension, different board types and characteristics) as long as you’ve found the necessary puzzle pieces to unlock them. In other words, if Swap Puzzles aren’t your favorite type of board, for example, you aren’t necessarily stuck playing five of them in a row; you can leave them and try one of the other character’s boards.

Both the Swap and Limited Jewels boards are interesting variations that work well in the Jewel Quest context. The story is presented in voice-over for the first time, which is another small but nice touch.

However, Jewel Quest: Heritage isn’t wholly satisfying for a few reasons. First and foremost, the story is dull. The premise of tracing the jewel boards through history and delving into Aztec lore sounds quite intriguing, but in reality you’ll be exploring a lot of museums and musty old castles, talking to archivists, curators, maids and other less-than-thrilling personalities who rarely have anything interesting to say. I’m usually genuinely interested in reading a game’s dialogue, but this time I eventually became thankful for the Skip button.

Also, while tricky gameplay and strict time limits that don’t cut the player any slack are both hallmarks of the Jewel Quest series, Jewel Quest: Heritage seems to take them to a new extreme. The time limits, for example, often seemed just a little too severe. More than once I found myself just one move away from clearing a board only to have time run out right before I could click on the final move. Often this was a result of having to wait for a cascade of matches that I had unwittingly triggered to finish moving.

Having a time limit at all seems like overkill in Swap mode, too, since you’re already working under the restriction of having a limited number of moves. It might have been nice to have just one mode where you could just relax and think strategically instead of constantly racing against the clock. Another annoyance that caused me to restart more than once was that if the game thinks you have no more moves left in Swap mode it will automatically activate your Specials (a power-up that allows you to click on any square on the board and turn it Gold). The catch? There would still be moves left that the game, for some reason, just didn’t see.

If you want a real challenge and a game that won’t hold your hand, a game with some serious longevity that you’ll be able to pick at for weeks and weeks, then give Jewel Quest: Heritage a try. Make no mistake, you will get frustrated, but in some ways it makes it all the more satisfying when you finally vanquish that particularly irksome jewel board.

Reference accessed HERE. Originally posted by Erin Bell on Dec 11, 30th March 2009, re-posted by Whiterabbit-uk 2019

Conclusion:

Jewel Quest Heitage has some enjoyable new modes. The flexible format enables you to switch between different game-play types. There's a large number of levels to play through, plus there's an expert mode that's initially locked for those who like the difficulty ramped up..

Time limits can be too short, especially in swap mode, leading to having to replay the level, sometimes more than once.

Videos of Jewel Quest Heritage:

You can see several in-game videos of game play HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE & HERE.

Suggestions:

After you've had an opportunity to play today's giveaway please take a few moments to give some positive or negative feedback; for example, what you liked or disliked about the game, or how it could be improved. If you don't like the genre at all, please explain why and if any, what improvements would change your mind? If you don't have time to post a comment today, please do so at your convenience, thank you. If you wish to post a review or comment about the game later, you can access the comments section by going to the game giveaways home page, then scroll to the bottom of the page where it says Archives and select the date the giveaway was live (giveaway days are in bold type). This will open the appropriate page for you to post your comment or review. Alternatively, you can google the name of the game and include Gamegiveawayoftheday in the search. This should give you a list of links to whenever this game was given away.

If you miss today's game giveaway you can always get the game free via MyPlayCity HERE; or If you prefer to purchase the game you can get it HERE via Big Fish Games.

Problems getting the game to work:

If you're having problems installing or activating or getting Jewel Quest Heritage to work please visit the FAQ's Thread HERE and read through the communities comments because sometimes fixes have already been posted, for example, a common issue seen since the Themida wrapper was introduced three years ago is that some community members installation of the game are blocked by their security because Themida code has been known to hide malware, (usually an error message is flagged for example 'The executable is corrupted' even though in reality it is not); so as a precaution some anti malware programs will block and even delete the suspect installation files even though the files (i.e. the setup, read me and setup.gcd files are actually totally free from malware. This issue can be solved either by rebooting your computer in safe mode with networking or a quicker method is to temporarily turn off your security software to allow the installation. You could also try white-listing the setup.gcd file. In the almost 12 years this game giveaway site has been operating there has 'never' been a game given away that was infected with malware.

If for any reason you want to contact the giveaway team, for example, you have a game to offer the community, or are unable to download the latest game or other issues that the FAQ's thread or these comments don't cover or solve you can do so HERE

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank MyPlayCity for giving away Jewel Quest Heritage and also to the game giveaway team, as always, for securing other ways to get free games.

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway:

If Jewel Quest Heritage doesn't interest you, but you still hanker for something new to play, you'll find details of some game deals whether they be sale items, indie bundles or games being given away for free HERE (I've not updated the thread in a while, but most of the links still take you to the latest deals).

The rest of the information that used to be posted in the game review can be found in the forums HERE. Finally, check out Delenns threads for details of other free games and offers HERE and elsewhere in the game discussion forums HERE, (usually on the first page of the game discussion forums). The free game over at Epic Games is Oxenfree a supernatural thriller about a group of friends who unwittingly open a ghostly rift, ( worth £14.99/$19.99/€19.99). Oxenfree ends April 4th, where a new game called The Witness will be given away. Indie Gala have just added Memoranda to their free games list, plus another 20 free games in their recently added showcase section that includes adventure, RPG, Simulation, strategy and casual games i.e. Memetown USA, The Great Story of a Mighty Hero, Camp Sunshine, Five Nations, False Birth, GOR - Gorilla Office Rampage, Home is where Chip is, Age of Fear: The Free World, Die Legende von Saya: Befehl aus der Dunkelheit - (The Legend of Saya: Command from the Dark), What Never Was, The Last Humans: Awakening, Childhood, Dunwell, Safe Not Safe, Hi Hotel, Bugs Must Die, Cuadradito y Circulito, Hellino, Hovership Havoc and Wake Up , or you can find them all HERE. Finally, there are some excellent bargains on sale via Steam HERE.

The Elder Scrolls celebrates its 25th Anniversary this week since the first in the series ''Arena'' was released in 1994. If you create a free account at Bethesda.com until this Sunday 31st March, you will get a free copy of the third Elder Scrolls game Morrowind HERE. Accessing other Bethesda pages opens up a a pop-up giving you a button link to redeem the code ''TES25TH-MORROWIND''.

Many fans of the franchise still say Morrowind, (released in 2004) is the best of the franchise. Despite its aging graphics, I agree. When I first played Morrowind 15 years ago I was gob-smacked by the game play and at the time the beautiful open world environment. Granted, it looks dated now, but its still brilliant. Later iterations of the game e.g. Oblivion, Skyrim and The Elder Scrolls Online look amazing, though Bethesda/Zenimax have dumbed down the franchise slightly since Morrowind. Of all the games I've ever played, The Elder Scrolls is my number one favorite game. If I was only able to take one game franchise with me it would be The Elder Scrolls, (with its brother/sister game Fallout coming a close second).

You can get also get the first two games in the series free from Bethesda, i.e. Arena HERE(Arena) and Daggerfall HERE. If you buy the add-on ''The Elder Scrolls: Battlespire'' via GOG , Arena and Daggerfall are added for free. The GOG versions come with emulators built in that enable you to play the games without having to mess around with separate emulators (Dos Box).

Also, all the Elder Scrolls titles are on sale in the Steam store during the 25 year celebrations. You can find then all Here until Monday evening.

You can also play the excellent racing game Dakar for free until Sunday 6pm UTC Here ; It also has 50% off at the moment. :)