The Enchanting Islands:

In Brief:
The Enchanting Islands is an interesting match 3 game, with spell casting, boss stages and mini hidden object stages. As you progress through the game it can become quite challenging, with locked and then double locked tiles added later in the game. It's worth downloading, especially if you like Match 3 games; definitely one of the better ones of this genre..

The game was previously given away on the 18th May 2014, where it received a positive 76% thumbs up from 373 votes, with 38 comments. You can see those HERE

You can also few videos of game play HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE

Introduction:
The Enchanting Islands were filled with light and colour until an evil sorceress spread darkness throughout the land. You can restore this fairy-tale realm by collecting the elements you need to cast your spells and watch as glistening pools & verdant meadows burst forth from the soil. Use various tools to gather everything you need in this Match 3 game, and defeat the ferocious guardians (boss battles) in your quest to return life to The Enchanting Islands!

Edited reference accessed HERE 18th May 2014; re-posted with some editing 15th September 2021

The Game Review:
The Enchanting Islands is a match-3 puzzler with mini games that has you casting spells to save the land from eternal darkness, and making specific tile matches to gather enough elements to create your restoration spells

Once upon a time, the Islands were an enchanting place, filled with light and colour. Then an evil sorceress attacked the land, cursing everything she saw, and destroying everything she touched. It looked like the end of the Enchanting Islands, until Alice, a wizard who lived nearby, offered the people of the land a glimmer of hope.

As Alice, you must restore the islands to their former glory by matching element tiles and beating evil boss monsters using the tools at hand.

To play, you must swap adjacent tiles to make matches of three or more of specific types. In order to beat a level, you need to gather all of the elements that are required to complete the level; these change for each level and are indicated at the top of the screen. Sometimes you will need to clear all of the gold tiles, which can be done by making matches over the top of them. Other times you may be asked to release a special item, like a potion by creating matches underneath the special item until it reaches the bottom of the screen. For each board you play, you can earn gold, silver, or bronze medals, although this doesn't impact the game play, but does act to give the game more re-playability. (assuming you don't get the gold awards for each level on your first attempts.

Because of the game mechanics i.e. you advance based on casting spells and not by completing boards, there's no way to replay a board for a better score. Boards can take a long time to complete, generally 7-10 minutes each.

There are three power-ups available in game, each one being introduced at specific points in the game and when used are refreshed on a timer. The hammer breaks one block, the bomb destroys all the tiles contiguous with the bomb tile. The collector tool is used to collect all the elements of one type that are located on the board at the time it is used. The collector tool is doubly useful because it will also destroy chains locking those tiles, and clears the gold tiles located underneath those elements. Bubble tiles are wild a sort of wild card; where you can see all the different tiles presented on the board alternating over several seconds. Clicking on the bubble when the most useful element is presented will add that element to the board.

Of course, there are also a bunch of obstacles. Chains can lock a tile into place, and you have to make matches with them in order to break them. Some items are double chained. Spiders can leave messy webs behind, which also trap tiles. You can destroy the spiders by making matches above or below them, and break webs by including those tiles in matches.

While it starts off simple, things can get quite hairy when you have multiple obstacles and goals on a single board. The layouts are involved; Levels are timed, but the timer is generally pretty generous and not too troublesome. If you lose, you can just replay the level.

In a new twist, you don't actually advance by completing boards. Rather, you advance by casting spells. These spells require a certain number of “elements,” which you gather by playing the main game. For example, you might need 200 strawberries, 2 potions, and 50 gold tiles. Once you have enough elements to buy the spell upgrade, you play a short hidden object board to find the elements hidden on the screen. After you've beaten it, you get the upgrade.

There are several upgrades to unlock in each chapter. When you've unlocked them all, you advance to the next island.

Before you move to a new island, you have to beat the boss battle. This is really cute, and something different. You make matches of three or more, as usual. However, there is a monster scrolling around at the bottom of the screen. You need to make your matches over its head, in order for the tiles to fall and damage it and eventually destroy it.

Some tiles are better than others. Leaves, for example, just float off and do no damage. Bigger items like oranges do more damage. This is my favourite part of the game, and would make a nice stand alone.

The game features upbeat fantasy-inspired music, which really sets an enjoyable and relaxing mood during the game play. The length is good, so you can expect at least 5 hours of game play. The game itself is very smooth and polished; though a little dated graphically by today's standards .

During the regular chapter play, things can be a bit repetitive. The boss battles are the most entertaining, since they break the monotony. Because of the repetition, it's difficult to sit and play in one sitting. This is the sort of game that's more suitable for playing in short spurts.

There are only 3 power ups, making The Enchanting Islands less complex than many other match-3 games. The artwork is very nicely done, but repetitive. The tiles change slightly as you advance in the game, but you're still mostly dealing with fruits and flowers. It would have been nice to see more variety.

The Enchanting Islands isn't particularly original or complex, but it features everything you'd expect from a match-3 game. The artwork is bright and colourful, the music is fun, the rules are clearly presented and simple, and there's a fair amount of opportunity to form strategies as you play. It's entertaining if you're looking for a game to play during coffee breaks.

Significantly edited reference accessed HERE, the original reference posted by Lisa Haasbroek on Mar 17th 2009, reposted by Whiterabbit May 2014 and again reposted 16th September 2021 (with editing).

Conclusion:

Pros (both the original reviewers and my take on the game):
The game has standard match three rules with some extra ones thrown in for example to knock spiders off the grid, you have to create a match below them before they create a spiders web. If a web is formed the tile will become locked. Fun boss battles, lots of different barriers to stop matches such as double gold tiles to clear, spiders webs, double chains etc, plus collecting various fruits to create spells that will repair the damage done to the world.

Cons (at least from the original reviewer):
I was only able to play in a small window (though this could be increased in size if I reduced my monitors resolution). when I selected full screen from the options menu, the screen turned white. This may be because the game is quite old and the more modern computers don't lend themselves to some of the older games. If I was bothered to change the resolution it may fix the issue, but I was quite happy to play in a window, besides it was easier to take screen captures using windows snipping tool, rather than one of the more complicated screen capture programs I often use (e.g. older versions of Ashampoo's screen capture program 'SNAP' that are nearly always free from various sites that give away applications). The original writer of the review also felt the levels were repetitive, personally I found them quite challenging the further into the game you got and were not that repetitive; especially as I took the reviewers advise and only played the game in fits and starts during various coffee breaks.. My attempts at the first several levels never resulted in nya gold awards being made, making this a replay-able game if you are up for the challenge of getting gold for each level. Graphics were said to 'basically' be boring (there's only so much you can do with a match three game), again I found them acceptable; maybe not as nice as other games that were released around the same time e.g. one of my favourite match three games i.e. the first Treasures of Montezuma. Also said by the original review was that there were Limited power-ups. Personally I didn't find the power-ups limiting).

Notes on Security

I scanned a zipped copy of the installed game using Virus Total and it found 2 hits (MaxSecure & Zoner) from 61 antimalware engines. MaxSecure & Zoner are one of only several that often tag TooMky Games from all the other anti-malware engines; most of which are better known and more reliable. In this case 59 other antimalware engines found the installed game safe, so it's very likely to be a false positive.

The downloaded executable 'may' include some low level adware that only opens your browser once to Falcoware's home page after the game has installed and also places four shortcuts onto your desktop (which can be safely deleted once the game has installed).

The installation does NOT inject any malware into your system. When your browser is opened to Falcoware's home page following the games installation, it earns Falcoware games some money, part of which is given to the developer of the game for allowing the game to be given away free. Once you've installed the game, there are no more browser redirections. This is because Falcoware removed their installer over a year ago (that installer would show an advert for a game and then open your browser each time you played and then closed the game down.)

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

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/547cb81e90f3ddd2d3bf77de9bf853cdd24861e93b1f90163d37be668d109c76?nocache=1