This harmless little puzzle game is the first commercial offering from BrutoMemo Entertainment. The Duffer isn't sure where these guys are from, but it#s definitely somewhere far away from Texas. This game is a straightforward Bejeweled clone; that means it involves making two little gizmos in a big grid swap positions so they line up with other little gizmos of similar type. When you line up enough similar gizmos, that line vanishes, causing all the gizmos above it to fall down, changing the relationship of the whole grid.
The Duffer found Druids to be acceptably entertaining mind candy. The game offers 110 pre-designed levels and the Duffer made it through the whole thing over the course of a couple of weeks of pretty much daily playing.
The story, such as it is, consists of exactly one screen at the beginning of the game and one at the end. It's something about four Druids going on a quest to retrieve a stolen book. The only thing remotely important about the background is that the Druids each specialize in one of four elements: earth, air, fire and water. The gizmos you swap are supposed to be nature spirits, and when you swap enough of one of the four elemental spirits, you get to cast a spell, which means you get to zap a whole bunch of gizmos. There are four different kinds of barriers, and when you remove all the barriers from a given level you win. It takes longer to explain how the game works than it would to just download the demo and play it.
It also takes longer to explain the several relatively minor flaws in the game than it does to say, “This game was fun, I enjoyed playing it.” The game was fun, and the Duffer did enjoy it, so keep that in mind while I run down some of its problems.
First of all, the game has a really wretched save feature, which is both inconvenient to use and ridiculously easy to get around. A simple auto-save that activates the fist time you open a new level would have been much less intrusive.
As I mentioned, this game has a lot of levels, which is good. However, only the first 25 levels and the last 10 felt like they were really completely designed (and of the first 25, the first 15 or so were simple tutorial levels). The rest of the game felt more like it was generated by some rote process. This means that levels 20-25 were actually harder than levels 26-100, or at least seemed that way. This is not a fatal problem, but it does mean that gameplay gets awfully same-samey in the middle.
There's no documentation or in-game help whatsoever, other than a few automatic pop-ups that show up in the early game to explain the basics. But this game is so simple, there really doesn#t need to be more.
Other that that, there are two modes of play, one with a time limit and the other without. Except for very small children, I strongly recommend the one with the time limit, because otherwise there#s'no tension to the game at all. Without a time limit the game becomes about as exciting at one of those virtual-bubble-wrap web pages.
There's also an easy-to-use level editor, with which those who are so inclined can quickly learn to produce levels that are much more interesting and challenging than most of those that actually make up the game. It's a good thing the editor is easy, because there's absolutely no explanation anywhere about how to use it.
In the end, the Duffer gives Druids a qualified recommendation. The graphics are bright and funny, the music is catchy enough (although it sounds like something that might have come from a pretty cheap SNES game), and despite some flaws, the whole package is a reasonably diverting time sink. It's entirely suitable for play by school-age kids. But while the Duffer deems this game worth your time, he's not so sure that it#s worth your money. For the $20 download price, The Duffer would like something a little more polished. But keep your eye out, and if Druids shows up in the future as part of a bundle or better deal, it will probably be worth checking out.
