They call him Mr. Sweets. He makes a living selling delicious candy to children, with the help of music and a match-three puzzle game. What you're probably interested in is the puzzle game, which was developed by SKT Products, the makers of Magnet 2 and Bombsweeper 3D.
Match-three games are used for just about every job nowadays: tend a flower garden, kill spiders, battle foes in an RPG, take care of zoo animals; you name it, there's a match-three game for it. Next we'll be matching three to present cases in a court of law.
Mr. Sweets has a bit of a language barrier for non-Japanese speakers, but the gameplay is simple enough to understand in any language. You've got a grid filled with pieces of candy, and each piece has a bump on at least one side. Click a piece, and the bumps expand, pushing pieces around and usually knocking one or two off the screen. When three pieces of the same color align in a row, they expand as well, possibly creating other threesomes as a result, before disappearing.
When the meter on Mr. Sweets' cart fills, more sugary goodness drops in to fill whatever empty space has filled the grid. The goal for each level is to make enough matches to satisfy the customer's sweet tooth and fill the meter above her head before the sun sets. This quickly becomes more and more difficult as the levels increase (no surprise there), but it's easier if you can master pulling off double-digit combos to rack up the points.
Analysis: It's hard to bring a new twist to a classic and do it well, but SKT know what they're doing. Once I started playing Mr. Sweets, I simply could not pull myself away until my game ended and the girl walked away in tears.
The audio works, the graphics work, the gameplay works, the controls work. I'm having trouble finding something to complain about. All this game needs is an option to turn off the music and the sound separately instead of both at once, and it will be perfect.
Go and get your sweets on! And don't forget to brush your teeth afterwards!
An interesting new concept...
So far it was, however, too easy for me. At least the first levels, pressing random things sufficed, as well always clearing stuff.
So sweet and delicious!
Wow...I didn't get that at all. I just pressed random buttons and got through a whole lot of levels! :D
Interesting idea though...
The game practically plays itself... there was more being removed from chain reactions and the board being refilled than I was doing. In fact, I'm pretty certain there were some levels I didn't actually have to do anything.
The chain reactions get so complex that there's no way you could predict them all. Ultimately that makes advancing through the levels a matter of luck rather than skill, especially once the time limit starts growing shorter.
A very cute game, but nearly incomprehensible and as Bookworm and Mystify said it tends to play itself. In fact, I seemed to get more combos pressing random blocks than when I knew what I was doing. I noticed you can press blocks while combos are going on, but the speed of the game makes this rarely useful.
The song is catchy, though, and the gratuitous English makes it funny. I enjoyed it despite not knowing what's going one some of the time.
Same here. As soon as I figured out how to play (after I actually read the review), I started losing. I had been doing brilliantly by trying to play as if it were a normal match 3 game.
I don't know how anyone could predict the cascading matches even if there was time.
But still, I think it would be a great game if there was no time limit.
Clicking randomly got me to level 9. After I figured out the rules and tried again, I still clicked randomly when the action stopped, but I could keep chains going pretty well if I could make things connect during the chaos.
At level 10 the sweets turn into cookies!
I'm going to have "Mistahh Sweet" stuck in my head forever now >.
Same here Pure. I couldn't comprehend the Japanese instuctions on how to play, and all I could really do is just click randomly, hoping and wishing for those combos of coloured 'sweets' to fill up that rainbow on the right.
What the.... just played that and i have no idea what i've been doing for the past ten minutes.
I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm still winning, though.
Why is the sun crying?
The old man holding the jack-in-the-box reminds me of a certain SNL skit....
This game is RIDICULOUS :) I give it 3/5 for the being a pleasant/funny experience, but all above comments about it being impossible to make combos on purpose (although 30+ accidental combos are pretty simple) are true. I got up to level 13 following one strategy:
I try to click on only 4-nubbed shapes near the middle of the board, since I figure that maximizes my chances of doing whatever it is I'm supposed to do.
It seems that in the faster levels this game reduces to being able to make threes quickly while the combo is still running, for these get counted as part of the current combo, and the level doesn't end while a combo is still running. Too complicated to do anything more foresightful.
I got cookies at level 7 this one time.
For some reason, I can't play it, it just says something in Japanese and the word shockwave appears in it a couple times
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