Strange Scaffold Isn’t The Only One With A Great Match-3 RPG At Next Fest
Dark and creepy puzzles are among the best Next Fest demos.
I spent most of last year obsessed with the roguelike Match-3 game Witching Stone after playing a short demo. With Steam Next Fest in full swing, it’s the perfect time to find demos for the games that will be dominating the coming year’s free time, and it turns out more inventive tile-matching puzzles are on the way.
The biggest name getting into the Match-3 game is Strange Scaffold, developer of hits like El Paso, Elsewhere, I Am Your Beast, and Clickolding. Its upcoming Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 has its first public demo at Next Fest, and yes, it’s as bizarre as its name makes it sound.
Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 makes clever use of its Match-3 mechanics and its roguelike structure.
Set in a mansion where bizarre dinosaur-based science experiments are underway, Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 plays a lot like the Puzzle Quest games. Each puzzle has you and an enemy taking turns to make lines of at least three gems, and matching a certain number of different colors lets you cast spells, but it takes the concept much further. Each puzzle has its own actions powered by gems, from climbing over a fence to whipping paintings at a flying dinosaur. Its roguelike structure has you repeating your forays through the mansion aided by knowledge gained on previous runs, all accompanied by a soundtrack of what I can only describe as sinister carnival music.
It’s great and it scratches a very specific itch, but my favorite new twist on tile-matching puzzles — and one of the best demos I’ve played at Next Fest yet — is going for something entirely different. Much like Witching Stone, Kaamos uses what looks like a standard Match-3 board, but is actually a novel way to control turn-based battles as you progress node by node through its branching map.
Kaamos makes every battle a simple but satisfying puzzle.
Rather than swapping two tiles in Kaamos, you rotate an entire line or column at once, like you would with a Rubik’s Cube, or in last year’s Arranger. Your goal is still to connect at least three symbols of the same color, but thanks to its unique control scheme, you can end up connecting multiple groups of tiles in one turn.
In place of colored gems, Kaamos’ tiles have symbols etched onto their faces, like a red sword used to attack your opponent or a green shield which grants you defense. At first, most of your board will be blank tiles that can’t be matched, but you’ll gain more by progressing through battles. Each one rewards you with a new piece of equipment, which can give you stats like increased attack power or bonus defense, and also adds new usable tiles to the board when equipped. Along with defense, tiles can add armor, which is essentially defense that doesn’t disappear at the end of a turn, and dodge, which lets you avoid the next attack entirely. Enemies always telegraph which actions they’re taking the next turn, so Kaamos’ challenge is as much about strategy as it is about your ability to make the biggest matches.
Impeccable vibes underline Kaamos’ dark world.
Kaamos’ demo is on the short side, offering one of the final game’s three regions to fight through, and one of seven character classes that will be in the full release. The game’s Steam page also says the full game will have over 180 items to find, which should enable quite a few more strategic possibilities than what’s available in the demo.
Beyond its extremely satisfying turn-based puzzles, Kaamos also succeeds on pure vibes. The game takes place in a sunless world rendered in gorgeously chunky pixel art, with characters in bold colors that stand out against the dark and dreadful background. Its music and sound effects are equally old-school, full of crunchy synths that perfectly fit the dark dungeon crawling feel of the game. I certainly don’t want to live in Kaamos’ world, but I can’t wait to see more of it when it’s released.
