To play Azkend is to immerse oneself in a mysterious journey through the Asian countryside, rewarded with lush graphics and tantalizing music. It's also an incredibly addictive variation of a match-3 game.
Each Azkend level is a day on your journey to uncover the secrets of the mysterious relic that has somehow changed your life. Each day is represented by a playing field filled with different symbols. You can connect three or more adjacent matching symbols with your mouse. Your objective is to turn the background of each piece to blue as quickly as you can.
Once all of the tiles are blue, a piece of talisman (or a gem from the relic) is placed at the top of the game board. Before time runs out, you have to clear all the tiles below the piece to drop it off of the bottom of the board. Run out of time and you'll see the game board dramatically rumble down in destruction (and then you get the opportunity to try again).
Periodically you will unlock a series of different talismans. There are eight talismans in all: Hammer, Light, Thunder, Stars, Power, Chains, Avalanche and Extinction. Each talisman possesses a slightly different power. Some call lightning if you match at least four. Others rumble down the board, clearing the tiles below them. Once you have unlocked more than one talisman, if you have trouble clearing one of the levels, you can always return to the map screen and select a different talisman before you try again.
The early levels were fairly easy. They're a good introduction to the game to let you get the hang of things. As you progress, other little challenges are thrown in. You may find a steel tile you'll have to match at least twice to change it to blue. There are tiles that are locked or frozen in ice. You have to make an adjacent match to unfreeze the tile or remove the locks. Tiles with sludge can't be ignored. If you don't make a match next to that tile, the sludge spreads. You can't match with a tile covered in sludge.
There's also a lightning meter to fill as you progress. If your match includes at least one tile that has not yet been converted to blue, your lightning meter fills. When it gets to the top, lightning randomly strikes useful tiles on the board, turning them blue for you. Beware though - if you don't have any unconverted tiles in your match, the lightning meter discharges and resets to empty.
Along with unlocking talismans along the way, you'll need to understand visions that are presented to obtain more of the story of the mysterious relic. Each scene is a beautiful vista. In a small 'viewing glass' is a piece of the scene. You have to click the match within the scene. You need to match all seven visions before time runs out. You earn one additional second on the clock for each of the next seven levels for each correct vision, up to the full seven seconds. The time didn't matter much to me at earlier levels, but towards the end, I won by mere seconds.
As I mentioned initially, I love the graphics in Azkend. You begin each week with sort of a watercolor drawing of a new location on your journey. Complete a day successfully and another area of the drawing is shaded in until you have a lush, completed painting. The music was perfect for capturing the mood of the game, and I never felt it was intrusive.
I like that when you reach the end of the game, the designers give you a choice - now that you know what the relic is, do you keep it or give it back? Whichever choice you make, you're then rewarded with a nice fireworks display and the congratulations of the developers before the end credits roll. At the end, you'll also get your game play statistics. I found out how much time I've spent, tiles converted, how often I made expert rating for a level, and so on. There are also seven achievement awards for anything from most tiles matched at one time to how long you've spent playing the game.
The mechanic is simple to learn, true, but the game is well done - with graphics and music and a story that all enhance the addictive play. I highly recommend Azkend.
I’m a working mom – married with one child. My daughter is 7 and she has autism. Everything else in my life moves around this core. Online gaming has been a big part of my social life over the last several years due to the difficulty of going out and about. I have to say that my daughter Alissa is awesome at computer games. She has skills with electronics that amaze me. When I get away from the computer, I like doing craft projects (knitting, crocheting, sewing, painting, quilling, whatever sounds fun) and reading. I mainly read suspense these days but I have a pretty eclectic collection and a library of about 6000 books. I’ve been using a computer since grade school – I started with an Apple IIe and have upgraded considerably and many times since then. I played Dungeons and Dragons for at least a few decades. I met and married my husband through gaming. He was my DM. I stopped tabletop gaming more from lack of time than anything. It’s easier to meet and game with friends online than it is to coordinate real life schedules around my daughter’s needs.
