Given that playing video games is frowned upon at work, dedicated consoles like the Nintendo 3DS are reasonably taboo. However, smartphones are OK. It’s not too surprising that there’s a mobile/tablet games trend when viewed from this angle. While I have been actively playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf since the end of June (at home), I have more recently picked up Spellfall and Gridland for my iPhone. These two match-3 games have different mechanics and different intentions.

Spellfall was free when I got it, but there are in-app purchases. This game’s intention is to make money. That said, it’s not a bad game, but progress for me has been very slow because there is a skew towards not quite having enough money to buy the better gear that might give you an edge in the next round. The good thing, though, is you still get to keep the gold and XP you earn.

Spellfall is a match-3 game with RPG characteristics. There’s a short vignette that’s part of a larger story at the start of each round. Each round is basically a fight and you have a certain amount of moves to make before the enemy attacks. The type of attack you deal depends on the match 3 you make. The attack types are based on elements, e.g., water, fire, plant, energy.

If you make a match 4, you get a special type that, when combined in a match 3 or another match 4, will convert the entire row or column into that type. For example, an entire row or column may be converted into a water row or column. Matching 5 has the same effect except you get a special power, which deals an additional attack (complete with different animation) after all matches have been made. There are crosses which function similar to a match 4, except you get a special type that will convert both row and column. Lastly, if you combine these special types just right, you can transform a good amount of the board into one type, resulting in heavy damage.

In addition to attacks, you also gain money from matching gold coins and finishing rounds. Money can be used to upgrade armor and weapons, as well as buy runes, which give you additional power and attributes. Some runes have to be charged by matching the same type. Other runes are passive, like a defense rune that adds to your defense stat.

Enemies don’t use your board, so you don’t have to worry about them mucking up your perfect set up. Except, some enemies’ attacks can block some elements on your board and the only way to get rid of them are to either make a match nearby, or use a row/column-clearing type. Enemies usually attack fairly hard and you can quickly gauge how many attempts you have to defeat them or be defeated.

The graphics are colorful and the animations, although simple, are fun to watch. The only complaint I would have, if I were in a rush to finish, is just the slow progress that you make. If you die, you can pay $0.99 to revive with half health. I think I spent 10 attempts on one monster and I’m currently in the middle of spending another good 10-20 attempts on another. Additionally, it takes time for your HP to restore. On one map, it took over an hour to recover from a death. On another map, it took about half that time. This actually makes it a good game to play because the rounds are typically short (~5 min) and by the end, you’re left with a 30-60 minute cooldown which you can use to do productive work.

By contrast, Gridland is addictive and hard to put down, but it’s also easy to partition gameplay by the design of the game. Gridland is by the same developer as A Dark Room and it’s just as cryptic as to how to actually end the game.

Gridland is divided into night and day. During the day, you’re building buildings (by matching things of the same type, e.g., wood, stone). During the night, you’re fighting off monsters. I found the concept of opposites to also pervade the type-set. For example, when you match wood during the day, you lose health. Wood turns into a shield at night, which helps protect your health. Likewise, food replenishes your health during the day, but turns into an enemy at night. Strategy also tends to shift, at least for me, towards making as many chains as possible during the day and being more selective and careful at night.

During the day, you can upgrade the types by filling up the requirements for the building. For example, to upgrade wood logs into lumber, you have to make enough matches of stone, brick, and cloth. Doing this will upgrade your shield into something stronger. Also note that by upgrading certain buildings (brick and cloth), you’re also upgrading the monsters.

Each match three you make advances the time. In other words, time is not independent of your match-3 making. However, the animation (e.g., the character moving boxes from the warehouse to the buildings) is independent of your match-3 making. I read a comment that if you advance time from day to night while your character is moving to a building with a box, you lose that box. It’s a strange, but interesting, balance of timing.

The graphics are simple, sort of a retro, pixel aesthetic, but the animations are smooth for an HTML5 game. Since I’ve been playing on my phone, I found dragging to make matches iffy and tapping was more reliable (aka, good UX design). As I have been switching back and forth between Gridland and Spellfall, I have to keep in mind that the matches are stricter in Gridland than Spellfall. That is, I can set up a cross pattern in Spellfall, even though I’m not matching anything. I can’t do that in Gridland.

One result of that is the constant need for Gridland to analyze the board to make sure a match exists. If a match doesn’t exist, the board automatically reshuffles. Interestingly, this doesn’t happen often and the first time I saw it, I was confused until I realized what was going on.

I really want to look at the code for Gridland because the programmer in me is curious as to how he pulled off some of these things. Especially the match-exists check. I know it’s sucking up a lot of memory because Safari is very slow to open a new tab. I’ve seen other comments on how it sucks up memory on other systems. Nonetheless, it would be interesting to study.

In all, these two games have been keeping me occupied. I would recommend them if you like match 3 games or just looking for something more casual to play. It’s much easier to put down Spellfall because of the forced cooldown (unless you are an impulse buyer), but it takes some discipline to put down Gridland. Again, I’d suggest stopping after the day/night switch or playing a single day-night cycle.