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jp's Royal Match (iPd)

[March 3, 2024 08:44:35 PM]

I've seen a LOT of ads for this game.

You probably have as well - most of the (recent? current?) ones show a king in trouble and you have to solve a match-3 puzzle to rescue/save him. There's lots of different scenarios and they involve things like making matches along the way such that water flows in order to put out a fire.

To my surprise, the king-saving levels DO appear in the main game, but pretty rarely - every 25 or so regular levels you get a bonus one - which is a king level (I think they're called "King's Nightmare levels"). My guess is that they were added as a response to the advertising and the trouble that Playrix was getting into for having ads featuring gameplay that is not in the game. It'll be interesting to see how that whole part of of the industry evolves over the next few years - my guess, from messages I've seen on twitter (added by twitter) that flag those ads as not representative of gameplay, that we're seeing a bit of a tide change in that.

Anyways.

The main game is a straight up match-3, the longer you play (I made it to level 195 or so) the more variations you se in terms of things that get in the way of clearing a level, and it is super, super slick and fun and engaging. The powerups are pretty neat and the more you play the more you learn how to best use them to clear levels. And there are clans and events and everything is geared towards getting you to play for longer and longer. And, I did. It was super easy to get sucked in a to play an hour when you were just thinking of a quick match.

It is really good at this. A lot of it is because of the events - here's an event where you need to clear more levels faster than anyone else, here's another where you need to do a lot of level clears within 24hrs, and so on. There are so many of them and, I got to see a few weeks worth, they're varied and fun.

I've decided to go "cold turkey" after writing this mostly because I see how compelling and easy it is to get stuck in the game. Also, because there's a reward I think is a borderline dark pattern I find annoying. As you participate in events and so on you often win a reward that give you unlimited boosters of a kind (one free booster as you start a level) for a certain amount of time. Say, 30 minutes. The annoying part is that as soon as you win it, it unlocks and is activated. So, if you win it as you were planning on winding down and stopping play, too bad, you've wasted 30 minutes of that booster. I would much rather you get it and could choose when to activate it (like, when you're planning on playing for the next 30 minutes). I understand why it was implemented the way it is - it incentivizes continued play - and I think that's a bit manipulative, thus borderline dark pattern. I'd have to think about it a bit more to see if it really is dark - but I can say that I didn't like it, so I'm "voting" with my feet and uninstalling the game.