Triple Town: The Android Game You Should Download Now

February 8, 2012
matt
Games, Review

Often Android is the red headed step child of the mobile gaming market. We get Angry Birds sure, but it’s well after it was out on iOS. So what can we do? Well for one we could try buying more things in the Android Market, but beyond that, we need to float the good stuff to the top. The best way to do that is to comment and rate both the good AND bad things in the market. I am guilty of not rating things, but what’s the point? Can I get mad that when I look at the market and “Paper Planez Extreme” is the #1 downloaded game? While iOS users are enjoying Infinity Blade and NBA Jam.

I start off with that mini rant to alert you to a game you absolutely should download right now. Yes it is on iOS also, but who cares, we got it! It’s called Triple Town and has completely owned my mobile gaming life. I spoke about the game on the last podcast but let’s get into a bit more detail. It is free to download, and for the most part, play. If you don’t ever want to pay a dime, you can happily play the game in a timed setting. If you enjoy it and find yourself thinking about strategy, like myself, you can dole out $3.99 for unlimited play or piece meal purchase “coins” which will let you buy in game items and more turns. Every time you complete a level you will earn the same “coins” but at a much slower rate then you can buy them. Hence the timed play. As time passes you gain back up to 150 turns you can take and I often found that if I played in the morning and then not again until my way home I had a full charge of turns. 150 turns generally lasted me about 20 minutes of game play depending on how much strategizing I did, or how quickly I threw down items.

So what exactly do you do? You have a grid that allows you to drop items down and attempt to make connections of 3 or more (hence the triple in “triple town”) to combine them into the next level of item. The map is laid out as a little town (hence the town in “Triple Town”) and the items are all elements that make up your town. They are randomized with the base most item being a patch of grass. The grass becomes bushes, bushes become trees, trees houses and houses mansions. The better your combos, the more points you earn and the more coins you gain. There is an added twist that gets added by the addition of roaming bears. They “terrorize” the townies and generally just get in your way. Lock them into a spot with no exit and they die turning into tombstones. Tombstones combine into churches, churches into cathedrals and cathedrals into a treasure chest. They also include ninja bears which hop around the board can only be killed by the clearing robot. This is a robot that can clear any one space on the board. The combination of items is near endless. The more of one item you combine in a single turn (I’ve gotten 5) the better the item you create. Bushes will have berries, houses will be bigger.

The art style of the game is awesome. It is just whimsical enough to be fun to play without looking completely dumb. The elements are easy to decipher and the grid is clearly laid out. I had no problem with touch speed or accuracy only rarely dropping something that I didn’t mean to. I would attribute any slow down more to the age of my phone then to much else, but if you are running something on the par of my Droid X (now almost 2 years old) or better then you should be good.

The puzzle aspect of the game is absolutely addicting. I constantly was trying to up myself and figure out the rhythm of the game. Every time I thought I nailed it, something new would end up in the chain or I’d put something down in the wrong spot. It was great.

So if you have a hole in your Android of iOS phone and need a simple but completely addicting puzzle game to fill it, then pick up Triple Town by Spry Fox.

Nerd Appropriate