Wonderlines

In Brief

Wonderlines is match three or more game with a different mechanic to the match three games we usually see here. It's the first time we have seen this game on the giveaway project. :)

The Game:

Essentially, what you're getting with Wonderlines is a simple puzzle game that asks you to put three or more balls, of the same colour in a row. This sounds really quite simple however, it's focused around removing brown squares from the blue board. There are some added features of the game that make it a little more advanced and will really have you thinking in no time. If you want a closer look at the game, watch the videos I've linked to below.

The game is really quite easy to play and there's a tutorial making it real easy to get up and running. Essentially, all you have to do is to tap on one colour of ball and then tap again where you want it on the board (assuming there is a clear patch to where you want the ball to be moved to. If there is a clear path, a white line showing the route to the match will appear on the board). This seems really simple when you first start to play…

However, it quickly gets a little trickier as the game begins to inform of all the other features that are going to be thrown at you. For instance, small balls on a square indicate that colour of ball is going to form there soon. (this occurs if in your next turn you don't make a match. Every time you fail to make a match, the small coloured balls that are already present enlarge and new small balls appear, making it more difficult to move balls to create matches; though at times it can be advantageous if the small ball itself creates matches and sometimes a chain reaction that activates one or more of the specials). Making you have to think about how best to take advantage of how to complete a level.

Then come the extras, in the forms of bombs, diamonds etc and these also affect the game board. For instance, the diamond will lock on to a colour and then destroy all other colours the same on the board and the bomb will match to any colour and explode, taking balls out around it. These extras really add a great dynamic to the game and force you to use your head a little better than you would do.

The game gets slowly harder and harder until you have to think quite quickly nothing is left to become too repetitive and you'll be crossing an ancient desert on your quest to complete all the puzzles. It seems like a trivial ideal but, it really does help to make the game more accessible.

Edited (in brackets) reference accessed HERE 15th January 2021

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

Conclusion

I'd become a little jaded playing match three games, but I actually really enjoyed playing Wonderlines to the point that I was playing it in preference to some of my favourite Steam games of the moment (Generation Zero, Second Extinction, a couple of breakouts and The Elder Scrolls Online).
That's quite unusual as I rarely play these giveaway games once I've completed my assessment in preparation for the reviews I write. I have been playing The Elder Scrolls Online virtually every day since it was released back in 2014 and even before that when I was involved with the beta testing; yet over the last few days I've hardly played any of my games of the moment because of this easy to pick up but hard to put down arcade game. It's also a game we've not been given before. I wholeheartedly give this a big thumbs up, and highly recommend you try it out, even if you've had enough of match three games.

Don't forget to check the Epic game site for this weeks freebie, which is the premium AAA game Star Wars: Battlefront II . You have to have both the Epic Launcher and Origin installed to be able to play the game.

Also available until later today (Sunday 6pm UK time) via the Humble Store is the arcade simulation Bomber Crew. Once you get the Steam key you have to activate it via Steam by the 21st January, after which it is no longer redeemable; which is also the day the Star Wars game rolls over to a new freebie called Galactic Civilizations III.