Addiction of the Week - Triple Town

Man this feels silly. I make a whole first post about all the things I do and obviously the first thing that I choose to write about is not in that list.

So first a little preface. In addition to my main all purpose computer/gaming rig I often found myself needing a smaller computer when traveling. Well rather than buy a netbook I decided to get the Asus Transformer. Which is basically a half way point between a netbook and a tablet. But this isn't about it..needless to say I am quite happy with it. Now I usually just use it as a glorified web browser, TV replacement and sometimes a basic word processor. Now once in a while I hit up the Android market and pick up a free game to try out. And once in a while I actually find a good one. This is one of those times!

This time I ran across a game called Triple Town by what appears to be a small developing company called Spry Fox. The game itself runs of a very simple concept. You have a 6 by 6 field on which you have to gather as many points as possible. You get points by placing and matching three objects of the same kind. Doesn't make any sense right? Well let me give you a short example.

The basic block is grass. Most of the blocks you get are grass to place down. Now if you place any 3 (or more) grass pieces next to each other orthogonally, they will disappear and instead a bush will appear in the location where you placed the last grass piece. In the same manner matching 3 bushes combine to form a tree. From here on I think you get the general idea. Trees turn into huts, huts into houses, houses into mansions, etc. The game ends when you have no room to place any item down.

Now the game makes it a little harder. While it mostly gives you grass you will get bushes, trees or even huts once in a while to place down. Oh also there are bears. Bears are placed like any other piece but start moving around randomly around the board. If blocked off completely on all sides a bear (or group of bears) will turn into gravestones (which have their own match 3 pattern of gravestones -> churches -> cathedrals). You can see where things start to get hairy.

There is obviously more to it but I think that this gives you a general explanation of why a boardgamer would love this game. This is a puzzle with generalized rules and very simple mechanics on how to progress. The random selection of what you get to place down as well as the "enemies" within the game add a degree of randomness that make planning for all possibilities quite difficult.

I am greatly enjoying this game and I highly suggest to it to everyone. It's available on both iOS and android platforms as well as on facebook and G+. However, I must give one warning. The game is pretty addicting and while free is not completely free. You have a set number before the game doesn't register more moves (for a bit). Now this starts off with 1500 moves. Now when you have less than 150 moves left the moves will recharge at a rate of about one move per 45 seconds until it reaches 150 moves again (it does this server side so you don't have to keep the game open all the time). This is either a good thing or a bad thing. I like it because I play until I run out of moves and then go do something else. It keeps the addiction in check. If you don't like it you can pick up an extra 200 moves using an in game currency (earned from playing the game or bought) or just pay $4 to the company to get an infinite number of moves, something I am actually considering doing since these people probably deserve my money at some point.

Rami