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8.5 ultra recommended
Would you save your teacher if he/she/it was kidnapped by an evil witch? That's one of those questions without an easy answer.
Runes of Avalon takes place in an alternate history. Instead of sitting around Avalon with King Arthur eating apples, Merlin the Magician spends his days teaching runic magic to an apprentice, Evelyn. And instead of Morganna using her fairy-witch magic to heal Arthur, she uses her Photoshop magic to attack and imprison Merlin! Foolishly Morganna lets Evelyn live (classic mistake, because apprentices always seek revenge and/or justice). Before being spirited away, Merlin gives Evelyn some runes and asks her to seek help from the Lady of the Lake. Presumably he knows the underwater enchantress will be angered that anyone else dares enchant Merlin. And so Evelyn's quest to save Merlin begins!
Runes of Avalon, by Anawiki, is a beautiful game. If you were holding out for a game about rescuing Merlin the Magician with stunningly gorgeous graphics, this is just the game for you. All of the screens, game pieces, backgrounds, textures, wood grain, stones, skies, misty forests, splashes of plasma, etc. are amazing. The art looks like something a graphics artist would dream up during a restless sleep fueled by an entire large triple cheese stuffed crust cheese lover's pizza with extra cheese. The style is shiny dark with a heavy dose of earthiness, and not at all cutesy. I didn't see a single cartoon mouse. That's because Merlin's kidnapping is gravely serious to everyone in Avalon. Only one aspect of the graphics didn't quite work: the characters. Evelyn, the innocent apprentice, looks more evil than Morganna, who herself in fact looks very evil.
This is a match-three game slightly different than those you're probably familiar with. The game board starts with quite a few empty areas, and a few colored runes here and there. You are given different combinations of runes to place anywhere you like. If you can make a row (straight line) of three or more runes of the same color, they'll disappear and Evelyn will collect their magic power in a flask. Usually your goal in each level is collecting a flask's worth of magic energy from one or more colors of runes. You have a time limit to complete each level, which can make for some tense moments as you hurridly try to place pieces and make matches in the last few remaining seconds. Sometimes you will be waiting in anticipation for a certain color of rune, but like the long narrow piece in Tetris, it just doesn't come. (If I programmed a Tetris clone, I would check to see if the player had set up the board for a four row removal (a "tetris") and then hold back the long narrow piece. Just for the kicks.)
As her power grows and she interacts with various entities (like the Lady of the Lake), Evelyn receives different runes and learns to use them to cast spells. By making longer matches, and by matching multiples groups of runes at once, spells will be randomly attached to pieces in play on the game board. Making matches with a piece containing the spell activates it. Some examples are a bomb spell which removes all the pieces in that area, a teleport spell which randomly shuffles runes (if they form new matches those will be removed), a vanish spell which randomly removes some runes, a color drain spell which removes all runes of a certain color, a holy fire spell which removes all pieces in that row and column, and more.
Spells can sometimes create a rainbow of chain reactions as they activate each other. Their only drawback is that sometimes it's difficult to tell what color of rune a spell is attached to, because the spell icon hides much of the rune's surface.
As you can imagine, the levels get progressively more difficult as the number of different runes in play increases. Later levels also start with fewer empty areas in which to drop runes, so you have to clear space with careful matching (or a bomb spell if you can get one). There is a heal spell, which will change rubble/obstacles on the game board into runes that you can match. Runes of Avalon gets hard! If the time runs out or there are no more places to put runes, Evelyn fails and Merlin is probably walled up in Morganna's Deadly Tower of Death. If you're a slow thinker like me, you might find yourself wishing for a freeze time spell! (An "endless" gameplay mode is available from the main menu. It allows you to play some selected levels without a time limit.)
Uesugi's Game Tip: If you're behind in gathering magic for a certain color, cram as many runes of that color as you can around a bomb spell and activate it! Whoosh!
Unfortunately, probably only hardcore alternative history Merlin fans will sit through the multiple pages of dialogue that make up the story of the game. It's presented with graphics and professional voice overs, but it's still too much talking for such a simple story. (In fact, the Spires of Lothian bit of the story seemed to be told in a jumbled order.) There is a skip button that I predict many players will instinctively click.
Every few levels, you'll play a minigame involving picking a rune out of an onscreen list of all the runes. (Probably quite useful to players studying runes as a hobby on the side.) Successfully find enough of them and you get extra spells, or a new spell. Another minigame is a little more fun: When Evelyn arrives at a new area on the map of Avalon, you solve a square jigsaw puzzle of a landscape of that area. This is a nice quiet break from staring at runes all day, and the images are sometimes breathtaking.
Runes of Avalon is an independent game that looks and sounds better than most big time commercial games. The gameplay didn't knock my socks off, but the presentation sure did. If you like timed puzzles and want to stretch your brain with a different sort of match-three challenge, give it a try.
You'll notice that when you form matches, they fly off the board in a pretty smear of plasma. For cat owners who spend a lot of time tricking their cats with laser pointers: have your cat watch this game and see what it thinks. Maybe it will comically try to paw the screen.
[…] of Avalon received two more reviews. At Casual Explosion it earned ultra recommended rank with highest score of 9.4 out of 10 (for explosion) and average […]
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