I have 50 images for this game, but because Photobucket have significantly reduced their allowance for free accounts, I can no longer access them without paying a monthly fee. I have several free accounts due in part to all the images i used to upload for these reviews, but I'm not willing to pay the exorbitant prices they are asking to unlock them. I will post some image once I've had chance to capture more; probably later today.

Sky Kingdoms :

In Brief:
Sky Kingdoms is an excellent marble popper on the lines of the Luxor and Zuma games and is well worth downloading.

Sky Kingdoms was given away on the 11th December 2016 where it received a positive 75% from 42 votes with 26 comments which you can see HERE.

You can see reviews and other information about Sky Kingdoms HERE and HERE; plus a few videos of game play HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE

The Game:
Sky Kingdoms are the luxurious places full of green lush plants and peaceful inhabitants. The air is perfectly clean there and you can hear the pleasant sounds of the water and the warm wind blowing. There is nothing more harmonious, you may say. Well, everything is not so good now. The life used to be perfect there but one day a frightening dragon came to steal one of the magic crystals. What will happen to these Sky Kingdoms now? In a couple of hours here will be nothing except the damage and devastation if nobody helps and deals with the problem. Come on, everybody's waiting for your help! Here are some hints for you: use a special weapon to spoil magic spheres which will come again and again. Prepare to make fast decisions because the speed of the moving spheres is rather high and you'll have practically no time to think. Good reaction and attention will help you to save Sky Kingdoms. Remember that good work is always rewarded so do your best and collect bonuses which will be of great use when you feel weak and tired. But there is no much time to relax: level by level everything will become more complicated and each of 90 challenges is designed for you to pass through and have a lot of fun. These adventures will bring you to the magic worlds. Colourful backgrounds, nice sounds and perfect visual effects will add something special to the atmosphere. So you just have to complete the levels correctly and save Sky Kingdoms from disappearance. Download this game right now and forget the boredom of the reality!

The Game:
Not all games are for all players. Developers often create their wares with specific audiences in mind, and it seems clear that this fantasy-themed marble popper game originally released via Alawar Entertainment new, is geared not for people new to the genre or even casual fans of such games, but rather hardcore ball blasters who play these games for hours on end until they become so proficient that they can fly through even the fastest-paced, most twisty levels while half asleep. It is, in other words, a challenging game, though not because of any great innovation on the genre’s classic formula.

Sky Kingdoms‘ premise is simple: Players control a winged, ball shooting ship that flies around an island floating high in the sky as they search for a dragon that has stolen one of the gems that keeps these airborne atolls from crashing to the ground.

Our goal, as in all marble poppers, is to destroy lines of balls that snake their way over winding paths toward a game-ending terminus. This is done by firing coloured spheres from our craft at like-hued balls in the encroaching line. Match three or more, and they’ll disappear.

There are more than 90 levels scattered over ten chapters, and many have special objectives, such as clearing balls while avoiding incoming blasts or using special power-ups to clear levels as quickly and as spectacularly as possible. What’s more, there are three dozen different—and surprisingly lively—environments, which keeps environmental repetition at a minimum.

Also helping to maintain freshness is a healthy selection of bonus balls (created by matching a ball with a glowing white ring around it) and power-ups (earned by clearing a certain number of balls quickly enough), though their effects and abilities are pretty standard for the genre. Firing a marble at a lightning blast ball, for example, will send bolts of purple electricity down from the top of the screen that take out a random selection of balls from within the line. Hit a bluish white ice ball and it will freeze a small group of neighbouring balls; fire again to make them shatter. You’ll also earn the one-time ability to sort all balls in a given line into groups of colours, as well as the opportunity to set up a provisional cube-shaped blockade to halt a line’s progress.

It’s all pretty typical stuff for a marble popper, with the only real novelty being that we can not only buy but also sell upgrades for bonus balls. Players collect silver coins as they play which are spent on ball improvements that significantly enhance their effects (the difference between a level one and a level two stop marble—a bonus ball that temporarily arrests a line’s movements—is a good five or six seconds). If you find you don’t much care for the effects of a particular kind of bonus ball you can sell off any upgrades you may have purchased and use the coins you get And this is where things get a bit tricky. Players are given only three lives with which to work through the game’s generous helping of levels, and extra lives cost a whopping 20 coins a piece—coins most players would rather spend on equally pricey upgrades. Should you run out of lives you can restart the game from where you left off. However, you’ll have lost not only your score but also all of the upgrades purchased prior to the loss of your last life, which will make further progression within the game far more difficult. Indeed, so challenging are some later levels (tracks become short and balls begin to move mighty fast) that I found them almost impossible to complete without starting the game over again and trying to earn upgrades more quickly. Even then I often failed—and on the easiest of the game’s three skill settings, no less. back to upgrade another kind of ball—or purchase an additional life.

But I’m not going to complain too loudly about the difficulty. As mentioned at the outset, not all games are made for all players. Alawar Entertainment clearly designed Sky Kingdoms for rabid fans who lament the ease with which they complete most games in the genre. Gluttons for marble popping punishment will likely have a blast. However, one thing I will grumble about with some volume is that the game wasn’t designed with any consideration paid to widescreen displays. Selecting “full screen” when using a wide monitor results in the image being stretched across the screen, making both environmental objects and marbles look fat. What’s more, the desktop wallpaper that becomes unlocked as the game progresses is provided only in a low resolution format, which means if you try to set it as your desktop it will either be stretched to fit or simply occupy the centre of the screen with black borders all around.

Of course, these are common issues in the casual gaming scene, but they feel particularly shameful in this instance since the game’s art—which consists of simple but subtly beautiful and dynamic fantasy landscapes—is quite appealing. Still, this is a fairly minor grievance. The take-home message here is that Sky Kingdoms is a rudimentary but competent marble popper with a fiendishly challenging level of difficulty. If you fancy yourself a master of the genre, it’s probably worth a try.

Reference accessed HERE. Original review by Chad Sapieha Apr 7, 2009 edited by Whiterabbit-uk 11th Dec 2016 and reposted 7th August 2021

Features:
1) ...Get better upgrades

2) ... dozens of special effects

3) ... Different ways of destroying spheres

4) ... Desktop wallpapers

Conclusion:
This is an excellent marble popper, that I like as much as my favourite marble poppers Luxor 111 and a couple of the Zuma marble poppers. it doesn't have anything innovative, but it has been put together with lots of features found in the best of this genre plus it also becomes very challenging as you progress through the levels. Well worth downloading this game. Ideal for all but the youngest of the family and only then because of the difficulty. With help from parents even the little 'uns could enjoy this game. If you want to end a level quickly catch one of the flying bugs, it takes you to the next level, but you don't collect any coins for that level.