Don't write this off as yet another Bejeweled clone -- it's not. Tidalis gives the block-matching genre a much needed kick in the pants, with really well constructed and challenging puzzles, as well as a more casual and luck-affected adventure mode.

Hey guys, I recently purchased Tidalis and I decided to write a balanced review of the game, after seeing that the forums don't have that many posts and perhaps a review would help people make their decisions on whether to check the game out.

The first thing I'll do is give some background on my review and my experience with the game, which is what I will be basing the review on, to jump straight to the review, go down to the bold titles below, or go right to the conclusion, where I will summarise the points quickly and offer a rating.

The most important thing about the "balanced" part of the review is that I will give you the pros and cons of the game and my honest opinion on the game. Note that a lot of the review is my opinion, and not fact in any way. I will make it very clear when I am talking fact as opposed to opinion.

Ok, I have spent about 2 and a half hours playing the game, obviously not a lot of time in game but enough, I believe, to write a balanced review, as long as my audience understands I have not experienced every feature the game has to throw at me yet.

Also note that I personally spent £3.99 on this game, and steam sells it for £6.99. This is because I bought the game during a sale here on GamersGate, also remember that it's possible to register this game on Steam which gives it full steam features including achievements and auto-patching.

Ok, so on to the review!

Gameplay

The main feature in all games are their game play, especially in a game such as Tidalis which brings new and experimental new puzzle gameplay to the market.

The gameplay takes place in a Tetris style way, with blocks dropping down which you must clear. In this game, however, you do not control the blocks, you have to create links between the blocks using "streams" which flow through blocks and are affected by their orientation, which you can alter to create chain reactions.

Anyway, enough of my explanation of the gameplay, the main question is... is it any good? Simple answer, as far as I am concerned, a big fat yes. I didn't really know what to expect and I am usually the kind of person who gets very frustrated very quickly at these kinds of games. I loved the simplicity of Tetris as a child, and I loved some of the earlier twists on the same concepts.

Of course, this game isn't Tetris, far from it. But what I am trying to say is that a lot of these games are far too complicated now, they throw you in at the deep end using convoluted and confusing mechanics which you can not understand, never mind master.

Other games are the opposite, they are far too simple and it is easy to get sick of the repetitive gameplay too quickly, one of the examples of this would be Bejeweled. A game with a great concept but far too shallow, with different game modes not offering any depth to the actual game.

Tidalis, however, managed to find a happy medium between complex gameplay mechanics and simple and easy to understand mechanics, using the story mode campaign to lead the player through the different modes and features of gameplay which you can choose to deal with in the quick/custom and online game modes.

These modes (Game styles) offer a vastly varied experience from one another, giving you new challenges and giving the game an amazing longevity. Each of these game styles offers something unique and interesting, you could play the laid back and chilled out "Zen" mode which simply offers you an endless game which you cant lose (Although you can give yourself a time limit and try to beat the max score)

Or, you could play the "frenzy" mode which will panic you and force you to making quick decisions and trying your utmost best just to survive.

There are many other styles available which I haven't even encountered yet in the story mode, which I am only 17% through, which look intriguing.

In addition to that you have player rules which change the game around and difficulty settings to challenge yourself more or take it easier.

As I have said, three is online play, although when I searched there was simply no games open in their browser, but I'm not sure if that was a problem on my end or not.

There is also Local 2 player mode on the same computer (Which I will be trying out soon and I think I'll be having a lot of fun with that!) which also works online, so you and a friend on the same computer can join a game with 2 people on a different computer. Very impressive for an independent developer to even attempt to provide that kind of multiplayer experience.

What's wrong with the gameplay? Well... It can be a bit slow at times and lack the action filled and reflex based appeal of games such as Bejeweled. There are modes which increase the action but you still have to put a fair bit of thought into your moves.

Also, some of the story missions are trickier with you having to focus on efficiency and be careful with your moves so avoid certain losing criteria such as "Do not remove 20 green blocks, but remove 60 blue blocks" which mean that you have to be careful not to cause any combos which could lead to a chain reaction removing the green blocks. This can be irritating and there is no way that I can find to skip certain missions in the story mode.

There are also options related to the gameplay which change certain aspects and these are not explained very well, and you have to figure out whether they suit you or not by trial and error.

Music and sound

The music is very nice, giving you a nice and relaxed sound track when the action is slow and speeding up and giving a more furious soundtrack when things get tight.

I like the music, personally, but I can see a few problems at the moment and that is that the music can get fairly repetitive, especially in the more relaxing modes. I can imagine going a little bit insane on the "Zen" mode which offers an endless experience as there seems to be only one music track for that and it is short and repeats itself.

There is nothing stopping you turning the music off and using your own music as background, though, which I believe would be a very satisfying experience.

One of the best things I noticed about the soundtrack is that it does keep time with your moves, allowing you to get into the beat that it gives and complimenting the gameplay very nicely.

Controls

The controls are part of the gameplay, but I believed they earn themselves their own section as they are pretty original.

The default controls are entirely based around the mouse, with left-click activating the streams and right click changing the directions of blocks. This is very minimalistic and rather intuitive.

One problem I have with the controls are that they are sometimes a bit awkward, especially when trying to make quick moves when sometimes the directions of blocks don't change exactly how you wanted them to. The alterations you can make to the controls may help this problem, though.

There are also keyboard controls available, I believe, but I haven't tested these so I cannot make a comment on them at this time.

There is no game pad controller support. Something which doesn't affect me as I prefer using a mouse, but definitely something to take on board.

Art style/Aesthetics

The art style or the Aesthetic look of this game is very pleasing, bright and colourful and easy to differentiate between objects in the game, with a number of backdrops to the game, which you can select between on quick/custom games or leave on random.

The game even comes with a mode for colour blind players which is very useful for me. This mode is actually effective (Which, in some games, it simply is useless) and helps me di

This looks and sounds like many other type puzzle games based around the match 3 but this is so much more,for a start you are not limited by how you match your lines as in straight,horizontal or vertical but you can match your lines in any way that you want and this is unique,it will just have you wanting to pull your hair out in frustration at times but it's all good fun.

Graphics are really nice and cutesy,nice and colouful and well defined,it's nice that it starts off with small levels but expands greatly later on which makes even more of a challenge,has a story mode but you find yourself wanting to skip past the screens very quickly as these tend to have bordom setting in and rather annoying,music is very bouncy and cheerful but can become irratating but effects are quite pleasant,so if you can get past the annoying parts or tolerate them then you will have a great experience as this is a thinking man's puzzle game and will leave shaken if not stirred,so if you like to be challenged then this may just be the puzzle game for you but if you are looking for an easy relaxing game then this will just annoy you,me i'm loving it and gets your brain working and gets it all tied up in knots,it's hard,it's fun,it's cute and it's mind blowingly frustrating,a wonderful combination indeed,i'd give it 9.2 out of 10.

Surprisingly deep, and one that I almost passed by due to the graphic style, which looked a bit childish. But I trusted the developers after their work on AI War. When playing, I found that most of the actual dialog in the game and the overall concepts and gamestyle suits an older audience, which was good, and the game is one of those addictive "where did the time go" experiences. If you're looking for something with tons of replay value, with lots of additional modes, you can't go wrong with this game. Its stable and well polished, and is still getting some updates, so I have to give it full marks.