Written by Bernard Julius Paje
Title: Boost Beast
Developer: Arzest
Publisher: Arc System Works
Genre: Puzzle
Price: $9.99
The advent of smartphones gave birth to 'casual gaming', a term we all associate now with easy-to-play games that appeal to just about everybody. True enough, almost everybody who currently owns a smartphone has at some point played games on Facebook or downloaded a game via their phone's app store. One of the games that rose to popularity during this time was a little game called Candy Crush. This is a 'match-three' game, wherein your main objective is to match at least three blocks of the same color to clear them off the playing area. In our household, literally everybody plays Candy Crush—me, my mom, dad, brother, wife and daughter—so to say that it has casual appeal is truly an understatement.
Boost Beast, a match-three game in the vein of Candy Crush that originally came out for mobile devices, has been recently released for the Nintendo Switch. In this game the entire human race has been turned into zombies because of virus-carrying meteorites, and animals are the only survivors. To help quell the zombie infestation, a courageous pup called Alec has declared himself king with the intent of gathering all the surviving animals and stopping the zombies once and for all. The problem is, Alec himself cannot fight against zombies so you must make sure they do not get close to him or else it is game over for you (and the entire, er... animal race).
Every time you match at least three or more animals of the same color horizontally or vertically, the blocks you match will get cleared and you will get an equivalent number of animals to help your cause. Clearing blocks will also make animal blocks above them fall down, giving you a chance to make further matches (commonly known in this type of puzzle game as 'chains'). The game starts out easy, throwing generic gray zombies your way that can be defeated by animals of any color. As you progress through the game various new gameplay elements get introduced: Colored, non-gray zombies that can only be defeated by a like-colored animal (different colored animals will get defeated instantly); stones that stop the flow of animals (which you can break by matching any block adjacent to them); caged animals that can be released by including them in a match (or else they stop the flow of other animals, like stones); skull stones that grant all zombies immortality (which can be destroyed by matching any block adjacent to them); zombie swamps that continuously breed zombies (which can be cleaned by matching blocks on them); and more!
To complicate matters more, some stones and cages may require more than one match to be destroyed—the number of matches needed is signified by a number that counts down after every match. Also, certain matches of animal blocks will grant you a special, powered-up block: matching 4 animal blocks will grant you Cross Block that can clear or damage all blocks in a plus-shaped line; matching 5 animal blocks will grant you a Color Block that will clear all animals of the same color in the board; and matching T- or L-shaped animal blocks will grant you a Bomb Block that will clear or damage everything in a 2-block radius. As much as possible, you should always aim to get these special blocks because they are key to finishing the harder stages. There are also Boost Monsters that you can summon for assistance—three Grandpas (who can instantly add the above listed special blocks to the board) and a Grandma (who can instantly shuffle the board for you). Once you use a Boost Monster, it will take a few rounds of recharging before you can use it again.
The game can also be played entirely using the touch screen. Simply detach both Joy-Con from the Switch and voila, it is like you are playing the game on a smartphone or tablet (albeit only on landscape mode). One complaint that I (and my daughter) have with this game is that sometimes stages feel unfair and impossible to beat. There was a certain stage with a lot of skull stones that you have to destroy quickly (because they make zombies immortal) and it took us about an hour of trying before we eventually got lucky and cleared the stage. The initial block layout and the flow of incoming animals will either make or break your chances of clearing a stage at times, so luck can play a factor in beating some stages. There are also times when you can get too lucky, because the chains that happen after clearing a stage can go on for a long time—the longest I got was around two minutes of chains. Granted that I got a great score because of the numerous chains, it is kind of a pain to have to sit and wait for the game to finish the chains. A future patch to add an option to speed this up would be a welcome addition that I hope could get added. Also, an option to play the game in portrait mode would be a very welcome addition.
Overall, Boost Beast is a fun match-three puzzler that adds much needed diversity to the Switch library. For $9.99, you get 200+ stages of match-three puzzle goodness. The game is not perfect and there are some balance issues, but at least you are getting a full game without microtransactions and advertisements (like 99% of the match-three games in mobile devices). Boost Beast is a game that can be played by just about everybody, and is highly recommended for puzzle game fans.
YAY! 😊
- Has simple gameplay that will appeal to both hardcore and casual players alike.
- Hundreds of stages to play with new mechanics introduced at a gradual pace.
- Can be played entirely using the Switch console (like a smartphone or tablet).
NAY! 😞
- Can get very difficult on some of the higher stages.
- Luck sometimes plays a factor to beat some stages.
- Playing the game in portrait mode would have been a nice feature.
REVIEW SCORE: 7.8/10
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