Empires and Puzzles for Windows

Empires and Puzzles is an experimental match 3 puzzle, cleverly crossed with military tactical strategy and city-planning simulator, forcing the continuous development of a medieval fortress located on the outskirts of a fictional kingdom, where the war between good and evil.

And, although at first glance such a versatile genre symbiosis looks terribly incomprehensible and complex, in fact, even for beginners, adaptation will take no more than 15 minutes: you just have to study ways of interacting with the world, and remember the importance of some buildings. And the rest will come with experience and victories.

Narrative

The plot in Empires and Puzzles is banal: in a fictional fairy land, where magic has been spreading for a long time and dragons and orcs coexist under one roof, the harbingers of darkness suddenly appeared. Equipped with infernal armor, soldiers are threatening to talk about a self-fulfilling mission and already herald the beginning of a war. It is pointless to arrange diplomatic negotiations, and therefore – all that remains is to grit your teeth and start fighting evil.

The storyline of Empires and Puzzles, with a fairly predictable setting, will stretch for dozens of competitive hours, albeit in a somewhat superficial format. When developers unexpectedly show 2-3 animated videos in a row, and then they suddenly forget even about dialogues and answers, to long-standing questions. In short, the story is inconsistent, and the ending has long been a foregone conclusion.

Battles

Fights in Empires and Puzzles unfold on cramped gladiatorial arenas between two teams (below there are fighters chosen by users, on top – enemies summoned by darkness, or accidentally discovered while wandering around the global map) in the Match 3 puzzle mode.

The main goal is to cross the figures available on the playing field and inflict damage, depending on the complexity of the resulting combinations and the selected color of the figures. The logic here is banal: if three green figures are collected, then the character representing the element of earth will inflict standard damage with a coefficient of 1. It is worth getting four figures and the damage will increase by a coefficient of 1.5.

If the figures in Empires and Puzzles are collected in red, and there is no character representing fire in the team, then the figures will disappear, and the enemy will have to walk.

The difficulty of the battles changes sequentially. At the start, a beginner will cope with instructions, but closer to the finish line, even professionals will start having problems. And there are a lot of reasons for that: the enemies attack more often, and the combinations on the field do not add up, and the characters are not able to overcome the elements that the enemies possess.

Team

Battles in Empires and Puzzles are party-based. The team fits five characters who belong to certain elements. Fire, water, nature, light and darkness – each character has different characteristics and abilities and can influence opponents in different ways.

As in the case of the combat system, it is not difficult to guess the relationship here. Light conquers darkness, fire conquers water. And, therefore, you need to find the right balance and never leave the elements “overboard”, otherwise an invincible enemy will surely meet on the way.

Another important feature of the characters is their rarity. In Empires and Puzzles, heroes are available with one, two, three, four and five excellence stars. The more stars, the wider the track record, the more serious the growth of further characteristics and the more powerful the combat combinations. Getting rare characters is still a challenge, but here it is important to understand: it’s better to follow your dream for years than to spend the recruited resources on heroes with 1-3 stars.