Jewel Quest III:

In Brief:
Jewel Quest III is a match three game and third in the series. New additions to this version include some of the jewels have special properties; also you travel to various locations around the world i.e. Mexico, Iceland, Europe, Africa, South America, Australia, China, Alaska, East Asia, and Hawaii. In each country or continent there are several locations to choose from and each level can be played multiple times. The previous version was based only in Africa.

Jewel Quest III was previously given away September 15th, 2018 where it received a positive 92% from 26 votes with 13 comments that you can see HERE.

You can see community reviews of Jewel Quest III via Big Fish games HERE, plus forum comments, suggestions and help HERE; plus, there's a strategy guide available HERE. There are several videos of game play {……..SPOILER ALERT……} HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE & HERE.

Introduction:

Rupert and Emma’s daughter, Natalie, has been infected with mysterious spores while playing with a jewel board! Rupert and Emma have set off on an adventure to find the fabled Golden Jewel Board, an artefact only rumoured to exist, and a cure for their daughter in Jewel Quest III. Use your Match 3 talents to progress through each level, unravel cryptic messages, and discover the identity of someone who claims to hold the cure!
Reference accessed HERE 15th Sept 2018 and reposted 3rd July 2021

The Game:
Just when we thought the long-suffering Rupert was finally going to be able to settle down, a disaster strikes that sends him globe-trotting once more in Jewel Quest III, the second sequel to one of the most popular match-three games of all time.

Rupert and his wife Emma are on the verge of seeing their dream come true and opening a museum to showcase the various artefacts Rupert has collected over the years. But the couple’s young daughter Natalie suffers a horrible accident – while playing with Rupert’s jewel board she opens a secret compartment that releases dangerous spores into the air that turn her blind.

Suspecting his old nemesis, Sebastian Grenard, of planting the spores inside the board as revenge for stealing Emma back, Rupert must postpone his museum’s grand opening and travel the world once more in a search for a cure to Natalie’s blindness.

The core formula of Jewel Quest III is the same as its predecessors: match three or more jewels to clear them from the board and turn the tiles below gold. Turn the entire board gold before running out of time to clear the level.

The game’s first major departure is that the world is divided into regions that each offer a different variation on the gameplay. In Iceland, for example, some jewels are encased in ice that can’t be broken unless a special fire tile touches it and melts it, while in Australia the goal is to match 100 silver coins in addition to turning the board gold, and in China you’ll have to "trap monkeys" by manoeuvring monkey head jewels into special cage tiles.

South America is a turn-based region. Here, Rupert plays against either Emma or Hani. Each player takes turns making a move on the same board, and the first player to turn a certain number of tiles gold is the winner. There’s also a variation on this where each player has their own board and the goal is to turn your board gold before your opponent’s by making moves as quickly as possible.

As you clear one region, the next one will open up. Within that region, however, you’re free to play each level in any order you wish. The game’s story is still presented as Rupert’s scribbled diary entries, but because of the fact that you can leap around from level to level, there’s less of an overarching story to Jewel Quest III. Instead, you’ll read a series of disjointed vignettes that don’t always lead smoothly into one another. During one level, for example, the diary entry ended up with Natalie wandering off and disappearing, but in the next level she was just there again, with no resolution or explanation.

Another minor gripe is, surprisingly enough, with the graphics. Don’t get me wrong, the main menu screen, cleverly arranged as an interactive museum lobby, and the world map, which is represented as a rotating globe, are wonderful, and the pretty backdrops that have become a hallmark of Jewel Quest are present too. It’s just that there’s only one background per continent, meaning that, for example, the forlorn coastal ruins of Scotland’s Orkney Islands also appear in Norway, Finland and every other European stop on the world tour.

Like its immediate predecessor Jewel Quest II with its fiendish buried jewels, portions of Jewel Quest III are incredibly challenging, and the time limits imposed on every level certainly don’t cut a player any slack. Expect many levels to turn into races against the clock, which gets frustrating on some of the finickier boards when it’s easy to become stuck in awkward corners. I found myself wishing for some sort of power-up that would add more time to the clock, or even just freeze time for a spell.

Because of these foibles, Jewel Quest III is a game perhaps best enjoyed in shorter intervals rather than marathon sessions (unless you have either superhuman match-three skills, the patience of a saint, or a combination of the two).

That said, it’s nice that the gameplay changes up with every new continent, and Jewel Quest III offers great bang for the buck in terms of sheer length. You can go back and replay levels at any time, which bumps up the replay value, as does the popular Tournament mode, which makes its return and lets you play online against other real players on 40 different boards.

Reference accessed HERE; original review posted by Erin Bell on the 17th June, 2018; Edited and reposted by Whiterabbit-uk 15th Sept 2018 and again 3rd July 2021

Notes on Security
I scanned a zipped copy of the installed game and it found two hits (Microsoft & Zilliya) from 59 antimalware engines. Most of MyPlayCity's games will result in a few of the many antimalware suites to flag it simply as a safety net. In reality these are false positives and you can be assured that the game is safe to download and install. Because the downloaded file is wrapped in a Themida wrapper (the file with the brown key icon), you may also get a warning because of this when you first download the game. This is because Themida wrappers can also hide malware.

The downloaded executable 'may' include the remnants of some low level adware that only opens your browser to MyPlayCity's home page when you close the game down each time you play it and after the game has been installed. It also places a couple of shortcuts onto your desktop (which can be safely deleted once the game has installed).

Please note, the installation 'does not' inject any malware into your system. When your browser is opened to MyPlayCity's home page when the game has been installed, it earns MyPlayCity some money, part of which is given to the developer of the game for allowing the registered game to be given away for free.

You can see the results of the scan via the following link:


https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/3a6b88f513706fdecb084bc1176c312c7618deb0fa0997d7aa107733bc1582a7/detection

Other Free Games:
The latest free game from Epic is The Spectrum Retreat - a challenging, first-person puzzle game set in the near future. You awake at The Penrose hotel, a peaceful yet unsettling refuge from the outside world. As a valued guest, your existence is embedded into the corridors and guest rooms of The Penrose and will be available to add to your Epic account until Thursday 8th July at 4pm UK time/11am EST.
Two more games will then be given away called Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead (looks great) which combines the legendary and challenging puzzle gameplay of Bridge Constructor™ with the post-apocalyptic zombie universe of AMC’s The Walking Dead and Ironcast that was Inspired by Victorian-era science fiction writers such as H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, Ironcast is set in an exciting alternative history; a time when refined men and women in top hats and bonnets commanded gigantic walking war machines, laying waste to the enemies of the British Empire! Take control of a 7 meter tall walking vehicle called an Ironcast and face off against an invading force of enemy Ironcast in order to defend 1880's Victorian England. The game is one of my favourite versions of a match three game where creating matches gives you chances to beat your AI opponent. I already have this game on Steam and absolutely love it. The game play may take a good half hour to fully get to grips with learning all the various aspects of the game, but it's well worth the effort. It has mainly positive reviews on Steam HERE . These two games will be available to add to your EPIC games library from Thursday the 8th July to Thursday 15th July at 4pm UK time/11am EST when a new set of games will be available to add to your account. Since Epic Games started to give away games back in Nov 2018 I've accumulated over 270 games not counting duplicates, most of which are either AAA or high end indie arcade games.

Also from Epic, If you play online with friends there are several free online games for example there 's a decent PvE/PvP FPS game called Scavengers with a coop mode (I checked it out recently and it looks fantastic as well as plays well) and you can still get the clicker RPG that was given away several weeks ago with around $100 worth of extra content called Idle Champions. I've posted some details about Idle Champions over in the forums HERE, where you'll also find links to a Reddit page where you can pick up codes to redeem chests for free that give you various buffs and other items to add to your account that boost your heroes abilities and health as well as affect your group of heroes in game, for example potions that boost health or DPS, contracts that can improve armour or weapons already used by the heroes or other contracts that add specific amounts of gold to your bank as well as items of jewellery, armour or weapons that buff your characters stats. I've stopped playing the game recently, simply because it was too addicting.

Please see Delenn's threads for Steam and Non Steam freebies HERE and HERE respectively. Delenn has been updating these regularly for years now. It’s worth adding these links to your favourites and checking regularly for available freebies. Most are only free for a specific time. If you miss the deadline you’ll miss out. Once added to your account, it’s yours to keep. Delenn has recently posted details of more Steam games that are temporarily free. One may be until it leaves early access??? - i.e. Tower Ball - Incremental Tower Défense plus a reflex game called Keyboard Killers are still free. Delenn posted details of a free origin came called Battlefield 4 which is available for free if you have an Amazon Prime account (If you like FPS games, it's a brilliant game to own. (not sure if it's still live).

You'll find hundreds of freeware games of all arcade and indie genres on Itch.io and Caimans Games as well as other sources. Please do check out the game discussion forums for older posts HERE (the sticky section is useful). Many of the earlier posts may be out of date with respect to the links I and others have provided to the free games; however, you only need to know the name of the game to find most of them via other sources. Many of those games from 2008 to around 2017 were posted as part of a project to supplement the lack of weekday games when the game giveaway went to weekend only games around Easter 2008 (mainly instigated due to the financial crisis of 2008) until November 2018 when Falcoware stepped into the weekday slot; however, from around 2015 onwards we did start to get the occasional Steam key for various games offered as limited giveaways, with a restriction on the number of keys available (anywhere from 25 to 2000+). These included over 60 decent AAA games and indie arcade games ; for example some of the better AAA games included , lucky Warhammer: Vermintide 1 & 2 plus DLC for version 2; Dreadlands, Mount & Blade: Warband, Immortal Unchained and Conan Exiles.

The Indie Gala developers freebies are available HERE (latest additions) and HERE (81 games in the Showcase, most full versions). Recent additions include In Between Land Sonya: The Great Adventure, The Last Dream: Developer's Edition, Deep Despair Cube Runner, Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders, Whispering Willows Snow White Solitaire. Charmed Kingdom, Adam Wolfe (Complete Edition), Doodle Devil, Deep Space Anomaly and the latest addition Kick Ass Commandos; plus, many more in the showcase section HERE and the Freebies section HERE.

It’s worth adding most of the links to your favourites and checking regularly for available freebies. Most are only free for a specific time. If you miss the deadline you’ll miss out. Once added to your account, they are yours to keep. :)