For thirty years, the gaming public has be matching digital blocks to clear boards, but this April we were given the opportunity with the Steam release of ReignMaker to do just that, with a twist. That twist, to my intense disappointment, is the implementation of an energy mechanic in a game that is not free to play. As you match tiles to defeat foes in a conquest mode you're gathering resources for your town, which you can then spend on your town to gather resources quicker and upgrade your skills. In the town, political decisions are presented to the player which affect the game world in different ways.
The decisions are not as meaningful as the game makes them out to be. It becomes apparent quite quickly that these decisions are a break from the hedonic treadmill that is resource gathering. This loop is actually quite frustrating. Upgrades are expensive and resources gather slowly. Usable items are not only expensive but expendable. What this loop leads to is a similar grind akin to the free to play match three games in the genre such as Candy Crush but somehow worse.
The game quickly transitions from a light match three puzzler to a hectic mess, where the player frantically uses everything in their arsenal to defeat foes. With everything being so expensive, the game artificially enforces replaying levels over and over to progress. Soon political decisions that happened quite frequently stop coming and the player is stuck replaying old levels in a futile attempt to slowly progress through the game.
This isn't to say that the game is difficult in the traditional sense. If it were merely an expectation to match any of the tiles to defeat the enemies the game would be quite easy. What the game requires is that you match specific tiles in specific locations on the board to send them flailing at your enemies. This is an inherently flawed mechanic. Toward the bottom of the board, due to how pieces fall, you tend to have less pieces to which you can match as you play. The flawed attack method accompanied by the fact that boss battles have you attacking solitary lanes leads to difficulty that is punitive not rewarding. To say that ReignMaker tests your patience is an understatement. ReignMaker is a wholly unsatisfactory attempt at inundating the player with the counter-intuitive mechanics that have plagued this genre while masquerading itself as an alternative.