A match-3 masterpiece.
Typically match-3 games are a no-fail affair where it’s all about chasing scores and choosing between “good” and “better” lines. Finity cranks the difficulty knob the other way, turning the thing into an abstracted survival game where your moves are so desperately finite that every tile in the 4x4 grid becomes its own dire little micro-problem ticking down towards oblivion.
“Hmm, that’s no good, but… aha!” (click)(pop) “okay, phew…” (clack) “… well, that’s a problem. Hmm…” Repeat x100 until you win the round or lock up your entire grid and die.
This ramp up feels perfectly tuned to what I’m looking for in a phone game. Planning ahead to setup big galaxy-brain doubles and triples feels rewarding but not so necessary that it’s stressful. Usually it only takes a few seconds to spot the best match on the board and keep on truckin’. When luck is on your side, it’s breezy. When luck turns against you, you have juuuuust enough one-shot emergency tools to dig yourself out of trouble, if you can figure out creative ways to deploy them.
The only thing that goes unreasonably hard is the game’s aesthetic. The color palette is maximally tasteful. The sound design is maximally satisfying too, but just as often I’d be sneaking in a no-sound round at my desk and even the haptics are remarkably well thought-out. An example: if you start sliding a tile and then change your mind before dropping it, there is a subtly different click that tells you when you’ve put it back in the same spot where it started.
Simply excellent design choices throughout. Much like Threes— one of Finity’s obvious inspirations— it feels like the product of two hundred tiny iterations. Every little thing that could be better they made a little better.
I don’t think it will dethrone Grindstone— I’m not sure anything ever will— but it is rocketing up my list of Apple Arcade recommendations. Effin’ marvelous.
Apple Arcade ranked
Typically match-3 games are a no-fail affair where it’s all about chasing scores and choosing between “good” and “better” lines. Finity cranks the difficulty knob the other way, turning the thing into an abstracted survival game where your moves are so desperately finite that every tile in the 4x4 grid becomes its own dire little micro-problem ticking down towards oblivion.
“Hmm, that’s no good, but… aha!” (click)(pop) “okay, phew…” (clack) “… well, that’s a problem. Hmm…” Repeat x100 until you win the round or lock up your entire grid and die.
This ramp up feels perfectly tuned to what I’m looking for in a phone game. Planning ahead to setup big galaxy-brain doubles and triples feels rewarding but not so necessary that it’s stressful. Usually it only takes a few seconds to spot the best match on the board and keep on truckin’. When luck is on your side, it’s breezy. When luck turns against you, you have juuuuust enough one-shot emergency tools to dig yourself out of trouble, if you can figure out creative ways to deploy them.
The only thing that goes unreasonably hard is the game’s aesthetic. The color palette is maximally tasteful. The sound design is maximally satisfying too, but just as often I’d be sneaking in a no-sound round at my desk and even the haptics are remarkably well thought-out. An example: if you start sliding a tile and then change your mind before dropping it, there is a subtly different click that tells you when you’ve put it back in the same spot where it started.
Simply excellent design choices throughout. Much like Threes— one of Finity’s obvious inspirations— it feels like the product of two hundred tiny iterations. Every little thing that could be better they made a little better.
I don’t think it will dethrone Grindstone— I’m not sure anything ever will— but it is rocketing up my list of Apple Arcade recommendations. Effin’ marvelous.
Apple Arcade ranked