Wild West Story: The Beginnings

In Brief

Wild West Story: The Beginnings is a match three game originally given away 25th May 2012 where it received a positive 81% from 449 votes. You can see the 73 comments posted HERE.

You can see a couple of videos of game play HERE and HERE

Introduction

Become a real American Western hero! In Wild West Story: The Beginnings, an exciting hidden object game, you rebuild a ghost town in the heart of the Wild West. A young Indian and your faithful companion – Coyote Cub – will help you perform the task. Ensure the welfare of the town and solve colourful, engrossing match 3 and hidden object puzzles along with your new friend. Play this free match 3 and hidden object game now!

Reference accessed HERE; 24th January 2021.

The Game

The story of Calamity Jane tells of a passionate figure who showed kindness towards the needy, and hostility towards those who threatened her people. Wild West Story: The Beginnings alters the story for its own match-3 gaming needs, showing Jane as an outcast who builds up a ghost town into a bustling place of interest.

Wild West Story is charming and enjoyable, which exciting match-3 action that provides enough variety to keep the gold flowing for many hours. It doesn’t exactly do anything we haven’t already seen, but it oozes style and flair, with city building and hidden object puzzles thrown in to keep us entertained.

Bella Jane is an ordinary girl from Louisiana, until the day her father is shot dead during a robbery. Soon afterwards, her mother dies too, and Bella is left to run away to the west, seeking a place to hide away. On the brink of death, a young boy called Coyote Cub comes to her rescue, and the two set off to create their own little paradise in an abandoned town.

Over 100 levels, you are tasked with helping our heroine mine gold, harvest wood and collect food, while also reaching each exit. Resources are displayed as symbols in a grid, and matching three symbols of a certain type will add that resource to your collection. Symbols must also be matched to help Jane push forward, and to power up special abilities.

Progression is a great feeling, as you’ll find symbols constantly combo-ing off your matches, and Jane making her way through each mine as you match. Trying to balance collection of resources and clearing the path makes for some exciting play, and we found ourselves scouring the screen looking for useful matches, while also keeping an eye on the road ahead.

Bonus points are also awarded all over the place, depending on how you play. It’s not essential to destroy every wall in each mine, but the more you do remove, the higher your score at the end will be. Similarly, the more matches you make in quick succession, the more power-ups you’ll earn, such as dynamite and your pickaxes – and these can lead to big scores too.

The secondary focus is on building up your town. Initially there’s no one around, but as you earn gold, wood and food and construct buildings, you’ll put in the crowds. There’s a great sense of personality, as your townsfolk wander around the screen, muttering about what they think you should build next and generally providing an air of excitement.

Although Wild West Story provides a great time, it also begins to feel a little samey towards the end. After 50 levels, nothing much really changes besides the difficulty increasing. Hidden object levels are thrown in every few rounds, but even these begin to grow stale. As mentioned before, the game also doesn’t do much that we haven’t already seen in past games, but there’s no doubt that the polish factor is there.

Wild West Story: The Beginnings is perfect for match-3 fanatics, and the story of Bella and Coyote Cub is a charming little tale. Those who are interested can grab a copy of the demo to try before they buy.

Review accessed HERE; originally posted by Mike Rose April 8th 2011, reposted by Whiterabbit 23rd Jan 2021

Please refer to both Saetana (comment #9) and Sue Ragans Comment #10 HERE from the original giveaway for more details of the game play. There are a few points missed in their mini reviews which I've detailed below:

1) ... Bellas side kick Coyote Cub has a bow that will charge up every time you make a match that destroys one or more of the brown tiles that lay under some of the gems. If you create a match 3 without breaking a tile the bow loses its charge. When the bow is fully charged Coyote cub will shoot lightning arrows in a few diretions destroying ore tiles for you (randomly.

2) ... If you make a match 3 with 5 or more tokens a stick of dynamite will appear where the match was made. This can be activated either by moving to one of the adjacent tiles or by double clicking on it. It will then destroy the surrounding tiles.

3) ... Unlocking different buildings improves your game play options for example unlocking the cheapest building, the gold Mine will increase the amount of gold you collect when making gold bullion matches. Whereas the convenience store unlocks hidden object games and the Quarry will allow you to collect building materials by making matches with the stone tokens. Other match 3 tokens will give you food resources (though I've not got that far into the game yet.

I'm sure there are more items to be discovered, for example there looks to be another three power ups besides the dynamite, but these are locked at the beginning of the game.

Conclusion

Overall this is a decent match three with elements of city building and even some Hidden Object levels included. Game play is reasonably varied and the graphics are pleasant. Overall I'd give this a decent 7.5 out of 10. Maybe fifteen years ago when I first played match three games I'd have given an 8, but there have been so many released over the last fifteen years I've become a little desensitized.

The latest freebie from Epic Games is the excellent space strategy game Galactic Civilizations III.