I'm here writing what is possibly my last review (at least for now) in a series of Match-3 VR game reviews. Yeah, there's one or two more games I could write about that technically fall in the Match-3 genre, and who knows what's yet to come in this crazy subgenre . . . but I've reached the end of my original list of Match-3 VR games I wanted to check out.
And how do I end this series of reviews? With a crazy game that's a mad mixup of Jenga and Match-3 in a VR game that has some good ol' goofy physics fun! It's Jentrix! Check it out:
Jentrix is an $8 game on Steam with a "coming soon" store front message on Oculus. Unfortunately at the time of writing, it doesn't appear this game is included with Steam's Puzzlefest going on right now. I'd say the price is still right on the money for the experience. Even better, apparently they just added multiplayer to the game? I've yet to try it out! I bet you it's a lot of fun.
Time to get your Berries, Bananas, and Peas in a row
So in Jentrix you slide elongated fruits out from a Jenga-like stack of elongated fruits and try to match up three of a kind. You gotta be careful though since the slightest upward or downward pull can send your whole stack of fruits tumbling. To make matters more frantic, you have pieces that are actually mini-crocodiles, birds that somehow freeze your pieces in blocks of ice (don't ask me, I can't explain it), and a timer that spits out pieces to the top of the stack every few seconds. If your fruits fall on the floor, you have a limited time to pick it up. Let too many fruits fall on the floor and it's game over.
Still lots of progress to make on the Jentrix campaign map!
The game has 20 achievements, and a good majority of them have to do with progression along the campaign map or with achieving high scores in arcade mode. So far in campaign mode, it seems like it's all about reaching point goals. When you achieve a certain score for the level, you win and progress to the next node of the map. It feels like I'm about 1/4th of the way in currently and I'm not sure what new mechanics they'll throw at me as I progress or if it will be just turning up of the five difficulty knobs they seem to have:
1- pieces fall in a faster cadence
2- new and different pieces
3- more and faster freezing birds
4- increased point goal markers
5- fewer allowed mistakes
I'm kind of excited to see what else they've got!
Giving a frozen strawberry smackdown to a red bird
This game isn't really meant to be played sitting down. You've gotta stand up to get all these angles. You'll also be doing a lot of toe touches as you bend down to pick up fallen pieces. So for a puzzle game, there's actually a lot of physical movement you need to do to play Jentrix.
I think my favorite part of this game isn't necessarily its gameplay, but rather its colorful skin and humorous physics fun. It's fun to grab these fruits and slot them in to the puzzle. It's also pretty funny when you just spill the whole tower and wait to start over. That said, they've somehow allowed for a certain amount of leniency with the game's physics and made a pretty great system in what seems an impossible scenario of stacking.
Happy Dueling!
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