I love this game! My 7 year old son plays it often as well. One small error in spelling in the game is the Pottery is misspelled as 'Poterry'

Liked this one better than most match-3s. The levels could get a bit more challenging at the end; I never really found any difficulty. In fact I had built all the buildings by around level sixty-something and then getting through the rest of the levels didn't really hold any reward.

Maybe after all the buildings are built, you could earn some optional embellishments to the town, like a garden, or paint the buildings, or have a circus come to town or something. There's no reason the whole town has to fit on one screen, is there?

A bit late but then here goes. The only problem I have with his game is that past the 50+ level there is nothing more to do but play 4 levels then do a search level. Make it become boring. If left to me I would have added more buildings and "projects". By the way, it has that wonderful relax mode also. That is a plus for me.

I found this game overall very enjoyable. The only thing I would change maybe is to make the hiddes objects section be a little bit more difficult. Thank you for the priveledge to be able to play this game.


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Thank you for your feedback Dane

Has anybody come up with a fix for the flickering problem in this game on some peoples machines yet ?

Can someone post a click-able link to this thread for the forum about this game, because I can't seem to find it.

I would like to play but the flickering just makes it impossible and Andy's posted fix is for a vanishing cursor and is not a working fix to end this games relentless flickering

Sorry, I spoke too soon. There isn't even any HOG now, just M3.

Unusual "take" on the match-3 genre. It's addictive -- I've played lots of this already -- but I find it quite difficult to see the path I'm supposed to be clearing and think the background colours might benefit from some tweaking to make things a bit more obvious. Also, the "completion" target isn't clearly explained at the beginning, the multiple-level rocks aren't explained at all (okay, so it's not hard to guess) and sometimes the rocks also seem insufficiently distinct from the background.

The closest recent comparison to this is Playrix's 4 Elements games which don't have the same issues distinguishing important colours at all -- and the explanations of gameplay and token meanings are crystal clear in comparison. Not suggesting you copy it, but it's an example of how to do this sort of thing really well...

>> I’ve played through level 78, and the story line has stopped, apparently with level 75. Now it’s just endless M3, with HOG every 4th level. There doesn’t seem to be any point to continuing.<<

The same here since level 50. Very boring and useless!

Thanks for offering a game with a relaxed version available. I enjoy playing, but I do it for fun and relaxation. Hope to see more like this in the future. Thanks to Seppia Interactive for sharing this game.

I've played through level 78, and the story line has stopped, apparently with level 75. Now it's just endless M3, with HOG every 4th level. There doesn't seem to be any point to continuing.



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Thank you for your feedback

Many thanks to you and to Andy who posted the fix. Very glad as this game is a lot of fun (hooray for relaxed mode!!!). It just really surprised me as I had already played for several hours with no problem. Only real comment I had was that sometimes it was hard to tell what block the character was standing on and at times the path direction wasn't very clear but pretty minor stuff.

Hope your daughter is feeling better.



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Thank you, glad you got it working again. :)

re: "Poterry" Sorry two t's one r :: Pottery



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You had me in stiches when I read both comments. ;-)

"Poteery" is spelled with two t's and one e :: Pottery

I am also posting very late but this problem didn't happen until today. Played this yesterday, very nice although the path could have been better marked. Very late last night I tried to open it and there was no mouse pointer. Used task manager to close it and figured I just needed a reboot. Tried again today before opening anything else nad I have the smae problem. Pity as I was having fun with it.


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Hi lonnih, someone else had the same problem and then posted a fix for it. check back over yesterdays comments and hopefully you will be able to get the game to work again. Also try playing it in windowed mode.

This is a very nice game, a nice mix of 3-on-a-row and HOG.
It has got some funny details. The graphics are very nice.

What could be a bit better is the percentage of tiles you maneged to break. It only showes up very shortly after finishing the level and not in the overview at the end of the level.
I also found it hard to discover the tiles that had to be smashed or the path underneath the tiles.
I also miss a possibility to skip the storyline ;-)

In general thumbs up for this one.
Sorry I'm a bit late with posting, didn't have any time yesterday.


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Thank you for your feedback, no problem posting late.

Great game! It runs well on my 4 year old machine with XP SP3 on it. The only problem I had with any kind of flickering was with the custom cursor. My solution: turn off the custom cursor :D

I enjoy the path finding and supply gathering elements added to the match three part of the game, and the powerups are great fun. My only issue with the game is this - I love having the sound on for a bit of aural feedback, but the music at the end of each round was annoyingly loud. Never mind, it is still a lot of fun, thanks so much.

Finally! a game that works on my WinXP, sp2 machine! I've been having problems with a lot of the GGOTD games lately crashing after the intro screen and wiping my desktop wallpaper with them (I know I need to check driver and DirectX updates), but this one works perfectly!

I agree that more on-screen help and instruction is needed - I'm at buying the bridge and I have a pick-axe upgrade, but have no idea how to activate it or what it can do; the path in the match-three is really hard to see; but this is a keeper for me. I'm enjoying it with no problems so far other than figuring out the game.








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Nice one. Thanks for your feedback

thankyou for a very addictive game, will be looking for more by this developer, downlooaded last night and then played till the small hours..... still haven't managed to find any powerups but what the hey,will continue tiil I get the hand of it

I have always been a fan of Match 3 games since I got into Puzzle Pirates some years back. The fact that the game keep a running resource total is great. Several times, I stalled progression in the overall puzzle and just sat there collecting Wood and Gold. The only complaints I have are about how the game reacts to combos, as a few times ive walked right past unbroken brown squares because nothing is blocking me and I start to automatically walk to the end. Aside from that, the power-ups, the resource driven progression of the town and the level by level mission are enough to keep me playing for hours.


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Thank you for your feedback.

Windows Vista 64bit - plays well and the graphics look very nice. The music is fine for the short loop that it is. Still don't like those custom cursors - too "giggly" - I turned off that option after the first HOG. I'm guessing this is intended for younger children. I got to level 12 fairly quickly.

There's a bit too much "clutter" on the match-three playing field for my taste. You can still see the main "town" background, the "maze" thing has squares/rocks/cactus/bushes, then there's the path overlaid with tiles, and the colored shapes with the contrasting color icons... it's more than a tad too much. Mellowing out the background would make the pieces more distinct.

The animated girl walking along is fine. I'm glad she fades out when you get near her. Almost expected an "Ouch!" (or some reaction) the first time I blew up a stick of dynamite at her feet. The little boy is sweet but I'd rather have some strategic control of his arrows, even though they're usually helpful. Come to think of it, I earned a few "power ups" but never had cause to use them, playing in "Relaxed" mode. [and thank you for that - I do not like to play against a clock, and don't deal with games that do not provide an option to turn it off]

The HOG part is OK, but nothing special. I'd prefer an indication of what's been found and/or what's still missing (visually, not just the numbers). The one with the 10 tin cans was really boring. That's where I stopped.

I'll probably try it again, but despite the novelty of combining two/three genres, it really didn't "grab" me like I thought it should since I enjoy both match-three and HOGs. Almost forgot about the buying/building part of it, which is not a +/- for me.

Thanks WR, GGOTD and Seppia for giving me a chance to try a game I didn't even know existed. Hope some of my comments are useful.




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Thank you Lucky Kitty for your feedback, much appreciated.

Very nice! Thank you! :)

@Diane: The purpose of the percentage is to reach a full 100% and get a "flawless" bonus of 500 points - though it becomes almost impossible after the first few levels (in timed mode anyway).

Installed fine on win7-64. Game is great fun, love the relaxed mode for game play. One problem though, when I want to exit game, clicking the exit button does not do anything. Game stays on. Have to turn off game with task manager. Please help.

Same problem with flickering. XP SP3. GeForce GTS 250 with all updated drivers. First two screens are fine, then third one goes crazy.
This is the first game from GAOTD that I've had problems with, no joke.
:(

I have the relentless flickering problem as well. XP SP3. All updated drivers on my GeForce GTS 250. Somebody help!! All other games from GAOTD have worked except this one. :(


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I will be posting a thread over in the game discussion forums so check back occasionally to see if anyone has posted a fix. :) Alternatively (even though it says there's no entitlement to support) you could contact the developer and ask if they are aware of this problem. also check their forums.

If you can turn vsync on do so; also don't use a HD resolutions.

I forgot to mention: Delete the Publishers folder to remove the "more games" button from the credits page (but you don't usually go there anyway, do you?).


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Not usually, :) Still useful to know.

Hmm, looks like someone's trying to copy 4 Elements a bit. But anyway, the game's graphics look pretty good (though sort of obviously 2D animated at instances). Gameplay is your average match 3. I haven't gotten to the hidden object games yet, so I can't comment on the entire game, but here's my initial impression:

- The storyline's pretty plausible, though I wished it was a little more active in the intro (like that Around the World game given away a couple of years ago)
- I was trying to buy buildings when I first started, lol. I think the game should just tell you to press play at the beginning instead of telling you there's a HOG mode and pointing at a building you can't buy.
- I don't think I get the point of Bella walking across the game field. It's a progress indicator, but why? I think I missed something.
- The 3D transition screen was interesting, but I can't tell if I really like it.
- I wish the game would give you a chance to break all the tiles instead of finishing right when Bella reaches the target. I don't think I've had a 100% complete so far.
- Coyote Cub's bow should not completely empty out when you make a match that is not on a tile. It should decrease for the first couple of times then empty. It's frustrating when you want to fill up his bow and get 100% completion at the same time.

It's time for modding:
SFP files: very simple archive format. All data is stored sequentially, uncompressed. Here's a struct:

struct SfpArchive
{
char Version;
int FileCount;
Entry Entries[];
char Data[];
};

struct Entry
{
SizedString FileName;
int Length;
};

Where SizedString is a length byte followed by the actual string, non-null-terminated. Data is stored sequentially, so to get the starting offset of a file you sum up the header length and the lengths of all the files before the one you're trying to get.

strings.sbs: A weirdly encoded string database. Making such a structure is completely unnecessary.

struct SbsStrings
{
CharTable Chars;
unsigned short StringCount;
EncodedString Strings[];
};

struct CharTable
{
ushort CharCount;
wchar16 Chars[];
};

wchar16 is UCS-2 LE Unicode char type. An EncodedString is composed of unsigned short[], where each number is an index to the CharTable's chars. If the index casted to short is -1, a space is inserted. If it is -2, a line feed character is inserted. I personally find this system unnecessary, but it does solve the problem of reading strings containing newlines from a text file that separates individual strings by newlines. The table, however, is completely unnecessary and may be seen as some sort of obfuscation. It does save on space a little, in comparison with a decoder I wrote that dumped the decoded strings to text file and separated strings with CRLF (the difference is 364 bytes).

Game profiles are stored in the user Local Settings\Application Data\WildWestStory folder.

Sidenote: I decided to giveaway snipe today, which meant that I downloaded and unpacked the giveaway the moment it came out.

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Not sure what you mean by that last sentence GMMan? Whether its a reference to the recently released game over on BFG, or not???

Hi!
Thanks for another great game giveaway!
It downloaded fine on my computer with XP. Went to success then froze and computer went down. Will run scans later. Rebooted and ran the game. Have not had any problems, game runs smooth, all works and very clear and detailed for graphics. Find the game a little different with the player walking the path when clearing the matches making it more interesting. Thanks again!

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Thank you for your feedback.

Nice game. Installed on Win7 64 without a problem. Only needed to make a shortcut to desktop on my own.

No time to test now. Maybe later. Posted to say that if anyone is still on the fence, Seppia has online demos (flash, I presume) for all their downloadable games. So, if you're not sure you want to install, you can testdrive first.


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Thanks Watcher.

Liked the game even though it is really simple.

Wow this is amazing. I just checked the download numbers for this game and at just over half way through the giveaway this game has been downloaded more than just about any other game since the game giveaway started at approaching Twenty Four Thousand and five hundred downloads. The giveaway site gets more than that every day, but for the game side of the project its brilliant. :)

This game has the feel of "Finding Doggy" and "Farmscapes". With "Finding Doggy" you are on a set path and the dog must follow it so it is the same as "Wild West". "Farmscapes" is the same as this one in the sense that you have to fix up the place. "Farmscapes" you need to get so many matches with the correct "stuff" and this completes the level. You then have money to upgrade. "Farmscapes" and this games only allow you to switch one item with another that are side by side. "Finding Doggy" and "4 Elements" allows you to create a line and anything above three items creates a bigger explosion. I like this idea better than the switching that this game does. I like big explosions :-). Out of all the games I have talked about the order in which I like is "4 Elements", "Farmscapes", "Wild West", "Finding Doggy". I like creating a line of the same colour in "4 Elements" and then the game play/graphics of "Farmscapes" and "Wild West". I have so many matching games I delete some if I don't feel I will play them. "Finding Doggy" will be removed to fit "Wild West" into my library of games.


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Thank you for your feedback. Already mentioned the similarity to Finding Doggy when answering Richard this morning. ;-)

A great giveaway today, so thanks GGAOTD team. I love the combination of great storyline, hog, and match 3, so pleased.

Installed effortlessly on both my desktop, and netbook, so look forward to hours of playing.

A big thumbs-up!

Installed and plays great on Windows 7 Home Premium, the only problem is I don't get any sound. Any ideas on what I should check.

Some graphic problems, with "some" games, can be solved by going to properties of the exe file and clicking on the compatibility tab. Then check box that says "disable display scaling on high DPI settings. Has worked for me on older games. You can also try some of the other settings on that tab. Has worked well for me for some games.

Re #25 -- Figured it out, you have to follow the path and remove the blocks blocking the path. The issue I have with that and also with the item indicators in the hidden object game is the colors/contrast. It's difficult to see the path it blends too much with the block colors -- a darker color would be better. The dimmed pieces in the match item indicators are tough to differentiate as dimmed -- perhaps a better approach, like I've seen in other games, would be to erase the found pieces.





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Thank you for your feedback.

On giveawayoftheday.com I read just below the link to game.giveawayoftheday.com: "Every day we also offer licensed games you'd have to buy otherwise, for free!". Is it true? We may expect a daily game? Or is this a forgotten artifact of former times?





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Since the recession hit back in 2008 the game giveaway has only been at weekends.

Just like several others, it installs but will not run. This is on 2 different laptops. One a couple years old the other a brand new 64 bit smoking fast laptop. That runs everything but this.
Nothing else I have to say.

Installed ok on Win 7 64 bit. On first launch (using non-Admin account), received a Direct X error, re-launched with Admin priv's and it worked ok. Tried again with non-Admin account and it works now too. Maybe it needed admin rights to create an initial config file??

Graphics are good. Thumbs up for allowing user to turn off sound and music, all devs should do this! Pausing when you click off the window is great too. One wish is when running in window mode, let me re-size the window to make it bigger without having to change the screen resolution --- though I'm sure that's a tall order and would require on the fly image scaling.

One major short coming is the lack of instructions. There are so many flavors of matching games, it would be nice to know how to proceed -- in this case, it's the swap gem method. The other thing that's not clear is the logic for moving the character forward. Sometimes it moves 1 space, other times it may move all the way across the screen, I've yet to figure out they how/why of the movement. I'm sure there is probably info online, but a user shouldn't have to do research to play a game.





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Thank you for your feedback. I agree with the lack of a help document. They seem to have assumed everyone knows Match 3. Even if they did, this game does have some innovative game play, well maybe not innovative, but the way they have set up the game you can play it in a few different ways, which adds to the replayability.

I love that this has a relaxed version. I have a handicap that makes me slow to respond. Thank you GAOTD. I never had any thing to say before on this site, but this made me want to.

To the developers, you made a great match three game! It is different enough to keep my interests so thank you! I love the fact that the stones you match are so nicely detailed. A great deal of thought was put into the entire game from the font, to having the buildings look distressed. I am enjoying it on this cold rainy morning!Thank you to the developers and also Game Giveaway! We have had some great games given to us lately and it is so very nice!

White Rabbit, you were saying you did not feel up to writing today, yet you have helped and commented a great deal. I truly appreciate you work and thought you put into the community to make it so nice here! As someone with chronic pain issues, I truly know how hard it could be sometimes and i do hope you are feeling better by now! Take care, Pixiey





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Thanks Pixey. Moderation is easier than writing a review, plus I only have to pop in occasionally to moderate the comments. It was too much like hard work to spend hours playing the game then writing up a decent review. to be honest I've not done a decent one in ages now; well, not to the standard i'd like to do it. Doing such things takes my mind off the pain somewhat, plus it gives me a feeling of being useful. :)

Oh and LOL at Tom #15 :D I soooo hear ya!

I'm definately trying this one, downloaded and will play tonight;-) thanks also for the heads-up re Ozzy Bubbles @ Realore!

This game works fine on my two Win 7 machines, but on the Win XP machine, it flickers at the menu screen and is unplayable. I updated video drivers, Direct X and played around with screen resolution but nothing has fixed it.


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Thank you for your feedback. Some are reporting the flickering on Win 7 as well, so there has to be something common to all of your computers that is causing the flickering, but i don't have a clue. :(

I finally got the Leave Feedback to work. I did leave my 3 suggestions and it said no suggestions had been made (it also said my 3 were in moderation).

The key? Use IE. It would not match my string under FF which is a known situation. Switch to IE and it worked!


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Thanks for the info Diane.

I liked the game and the graphics, but I could not find a link to a help or explanation file. I was looking for more information about power ups and bonuses. For example, how to power up the bow and arrow. If I did "something" it would power the arrow but if I did "something else" it would decrease the power to the arrow.


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It does tell you about the bow power up when you first start the game. you'll find one of the screen captures i took via the slideshow will tell you, plus I wrote details in my short review @ comment #1. Basically to power the bow you have to only create matches on the ones with the brown tiles. If you create one without it will send the power meter back to zero.

This game installed in my Vista32 Ultimate SP2 system with no problems. As is usually the case where there is no shortcut; there is no uninstall and the game is completely portable. When the "install" is simply a self-extracting compressed file, there's no problem!

I always test these games by double-clicking on the .exe file before I go to the trouble of making a shortcut. This game was fine.

I especially like the idea that it has a "relaxed" mode where you don't have to worry about a clock. I like to play games this way. I play games to relax, not to have to worry and get tense when I start to run out of time. That's not to say I won't get such games - just that I like relaxed better!

The one thing this game is missing is HELP! There are at least 3 ways of playing a match 3 game: swapping "tiles", dragging your mouse along a path or clicking on a tile to transfer from the tile attached to your cursor. With the discussions comparing this game to 4 Elements, the 2nd method was implied but it was the first method.

Most games act as if this is the first match 3 game you've ever played. For some people, it is probably actually true, so a "help" or walkthrough for the first level is common. This game has neither so for the novice (yes, there are undoubtedly some), this game would be difficult to play at first.

Other than the missing help, the game was fine. I'm not sure what the purpose of that percentage is at the end of the level but the game plays well. It is similar to other games (such as the Hidden Wonders of the Depths) in the path following idea. At least this one allows you to swap from under her. That silly crab doesn't have that ability.

Two other recommendations: Make the path stand out more along the background. It's not always easy to see where she is supposed to go. The second recommendation is to make the contrast between the blocked and unblocked tiles clearer. That difference in the shade of brown is just not that clear.

I still gave it a thumbs up and will recommend it to my friend who is at work right now and can't check for several hours yet.


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Thank you for your excellent feedback Diane.

Heyy il start with the critism 1st then the complements later :P
1) During the intro if the mouse is clicked it misses a line or two out n goes to the next part instead of showing all the line and moving to the next
2)Would be good to know how many days it takes to rebuild or 'help' a building before it is fully done
3) No achievements?
4) Instead of a small bar saying what a power up does, it should pause the game and a big bod should come in font showing how the power up works
5) While teaching tha player what each thing does in the game all at once it should be done in steps concentrating one at a time
6) Do the broken tiles have a purpose based on their colour?
7) Story has a twist but nuthing new or major
8) Tiles that need to be broken dont stand out enough (those around the path)
9) Powerups need to have a sparkle (noone likes wasted resources)
10) Could have some interactive things when lookin at the town

1) Amazing graphics
2) New gmeplay for a match 3 game (clearing a path)
3) Smooth gameplay
4) Easy to understadn and play
5) Hidden object
6) Interactive hidden object, uses commen sense as well as sight lol

Its a pretty good game, and i dont see how yuu can make this even better, i dont duually play match 3 games but this has another genre in it as well, needs alot more work but something is better than nuthing i guess
Great Work :)


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Thank you for you feedback. Much appreciated

No problems on my (Windows 7 Home Premium-64 bit) notebook. Installs flawless. Cute cowboy theme (the Indian boy helps the Cowboy girl) :)
On my computer there IS background music (usual match 3 music with a whiff of yeehaa !!) and also the option to check/uncheck fullscreen.
A really nice colorful game with option for relaxed or timed mode. One thing could be improved: visibility of the path.
Thank you dev and GGOTD !! Enjoy your weekend ! =)

Hope isn't a double post, Time Warner cable keeps losing signal.
Ok Win 7 x64 Ultimate. Nvidia GTX 460. Full screen. Music, sound sliders. Ran from D drive, made my shortcut using Send to method.
Game is colorful with some twists on well worn Match 3 theme. Not a M3 fan but this one holds me for now. If there are 100 screens maybe I'll try both Relaxed & Timed modes for 200 plays. Give it 8.5 for the efforts to kick bit life into genre. Thanks guys.



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Thanks for the feedback beergas. :)