Developer/Publisher: PlayScreen
Genre: Puzzle
Price: $3.99 (Lite Version Available)
Verdict: Match-3 in 3D is a neat idea, but won’t necessarily revolutionize the concept for anyone sick of the genre.
Pros: 3D elements are fun to play with, timed modes are surprisingly intense
Cons: It’s still match-3. Getting used to the 3D elements takes some time.

Whoever came up with the concept of shifting pieces around a board to match 3 in a row is probably kicking themselves that you can patent any remote idea for a product and then sue any company with the foolhardiness to make something resembling it years after the product becomes successful and famous, but software concepts can’t be patented. While it sucks to be you, dude, iPhone developers everywhere celebrate a little every day as they continue to replicate this basic concept, putting the occasional interesting twist on it. Match 3D Flick Puzzle is the latest attempt to make match-3 just a little more interesting.

Match 3D works in much the same way that other match 3 games work – you have blocks to shift around to make so that there are 3 blocks in a row. Nothing shocking there.  Where Match 3D shakes things up is that the game takes place on a cube, which you can rotate around, view different layers – basically, you can manipulate the view of the playing field to view the blocks in any plausible format. This ability to manipulate the playing field means that the game doesn’t work quite the same way as normal match-3 titles – whereas those games are a lot of times are about surviving long enough, in Match 3D you have to achieve a certain number of matches in the alotted time to keep the game going. This means that your best strategy in Match 3D is seemingly to just try and make as many matches as quickly as you possibly can.

The 3D aspect of the game and your mastery of it will be your life or death with this game. You can rotate around by dragging your finger across the screen, switch perspectives by tapping the wireframe icon at the bottom, and switch through layers by using the arrows at the bottom. Keeping track of where you are can get difficult, and the arrows would help out more if they were bigger, especially since time is of the essence. To survive, you will need to switch layers and sides to find more matches to keep going and going and using your powerups that you accumulate as you make matches to try and stay ahead of the ticking time clock. The game is intense in that way in that it drives you to stay alive and keep going as long as you can.

Is Match 3D worth it? As a speed-based match 3 game, it’s interesting, and the 3D aspect does make it unique. And the timer can be disabled if you just want to play with it without the time constraints, which is great to get a feel for the 3D controls. It was relatively intriguing even for someone as burned out on match-3 as I tend to be, but as a match-3 game  at its heart, it may not make the most jaded puzzle fans all that excited as the core of the game is still something familiar. However, for those who can’t get enough of match-3, the Lite version is at least worth checking out, with the full game only $3.99.