Welcome Time Wasters!
This week was pretty busy for me. Not because I had a lot going on, but rather because I didn’t. I ended up spending the majority of my time with Lunar 2, which I’m almost done with. I actually gave this game a little too much time and let it distract me from actually wasting time as a job. However, this doesn’t mean that I wasn’t on the prowl for ways to waste time.
At first I thought about turning to my smartphone this week to waste time. Amazon has a huge selection of games that typically cost money up for free (Note: This isn’t a paid promotion. Just a PSA.) I ended up grabbing Sonic 2 and Scribblenauts, but neither of those games really felt like they fit in with the Time Waster theme all that well. I finally found my time waster between binge watching the first season of Smallville (I’ve never finished it. Watched it as a kid and fell out of it when Lana became a witch. Don’t plan to finish it either. Watching the first season was more of a nostalgia thing than a drive to actually complete the show.) and downloading games on Steam. This game was Ancient Jewels.
Ancient Jewels is a simple Match 3 game that has players lining up jewels to clear them for points and progression. There are powerups to be used, obstacles to clear and more. The game isn’t really anything fancy and that was fine with me. There was no booming voice yelling “Sweet” at me when I made a combo and I didn’t have to go beg friends for lives after losing a level. This alone was enough to remind me that I really like Match 3 games that don’t follow King’s formula.
To be honest, I actually specifically searched for a Match 3 game to play this week. Sometimes I just want to fall into that zone of mindlessly breaking whatever gems the game throws at me. Current games in the genre focus so much on social interaction that I ended up looking at an older game to get my fix.
Being that Ancient Jewels is an older Match 3 game, it doesn’t look the best when compared to newer ones. There aren’t a lot of fancy animations and sometimes massive combos can cause the game to pause for a second while it plays catch up.
Ancient Jewels offers players a single music track that loops throughout the entire game. It was a soft tune that sounded like something that would play in King Arthur’s court. It helped me fall into the zen-like state I was talking about earlier. The sound effects were also really simple with small chimes that sounded when jewels were destroyed. The chimes got progressively higher pitched with every additional combo. There were also some simple sound effects when special powerups were used.
Overall, Ancient Jewels isn’t a bad game, but its not really all that grand either. I played it because I wanted a break from the constant social connections and needlessly complex audio and visuals found in most Match 3 games anymore. I figure most people are more interested in games that offer social interactions, which is why so many invites end up in my inbox, but some of us just want the simpler life. If you feel the same, then give it a look.
Ancient Jewels smashes its way to 2.5 GiN Gems out of 5!