PDAmill is at it again. The people behind the popular Arvale series and the classic Snails were busy this summer, putting out no fewer than five games since June. All those sleepless nights for them mean… actually, sleepless nights for us, too. PDAmill games in general look great, sound great, and are addictive as heck.

Their latest release, Melonchi Minecarts, is an original puzzle game featuring several familiar characters from the Arvale games. Does it live up to the drain-your-battery-and-forget-to-eat tradition of its predecessors? Read on to find out!

Installation

All of PDAmill’s games have an installation quirk that is unfortunate for us law-abiding consumers but understandable. While you can download a free trial version of Melonchi Minecarts here, there is no unlock code. You receive a link to download the separate full version after you pay. Your progress is transferred to the full game even after you have deleted the trial.

Otherwise, installation is self-explanatory and works through the typical desktop .exe installer. Enter the registration code and you’re good to go!

Getting Started

There are two game modes, story and arcade. Arcade simply generates a random puzzle of easy, medium, or hard difficulty. I recommend playing story mode first, though. There are three characters in story mode, each with his own level of difficulty: Duncan is easy, Grwyth is medium, and DeMenchev is hard (and if you’ve played the Arvale games you know how hilariously appropriate that is).

Here’s one of DeMenchev’s levels. (I haven’t decided whether he is holding his hat or scratching his head — I personally did plenty of the latter while playing him.) See the Stage 2, Level 1 caption? Each character in story mode has three stages of fifteen levels each. Never fear, if you get stuck on one character, the game will automatically (and awesomely) save your progress while you try the other two.

Gameplay

Playing is easy: just tap and/or drag where it seems appropriate. The goal of the puzzle is to lay a chain along the track that connects all the gems. Turns are only allowed when a gem is selected, and each gem can only be used once. Furthermore, the track has a nasty habit of exploding behind the minecart. There are no actual instructions in the game — and if I tried to explain, it would probably take a very long time and make little to no sense — but with a little playing, the rules are intuitive.

To solve this puzzle, go left one gem, make an upside-down U, then zig-zag to connect the remaining four gems. (Other paths are possible.) There was an error (since corrected) in one of the early Grwyth levels in the version I received, but I can personally verify that all of Duncan’s and DeMenchev’s levels, despite appearances, are solvable. Really.

There is definitely a learning curve to figuring out the puzzles, but once I understood how to play, the game was surprisingly addictive. After a while, very few puzzles stumped me for more than a few minutes, and my goal became making “full chains”: tracing out the entire path from start to finish without lifting the stylus. This kept the challenge alive even on easier puzzles.

Story Mode

Puzzle-solving is identical in Arcade and Story mode, but Story mode adds a plot to go along with the 45 increasingly tricky puzzles. At the beginning for each character, and after every stage, a hand-drawn image appears and the story scrolls across. The writing is full of PDAmill’s trademark zany wit, but it is also full of typos that are somewhat distracting given the level of skill and care that has gone into the rest of the game. (Hopefully the new employees are copy-editing ninjas.) There’s also a narrator who interjects between each level, just so no one gets lonely.

Graphics and Sound

As you can see from the screenshots, the visuals are gorgeous. It would have been easy to make this a basic puzzle game, but instead we get a wide variety of textured backgrounds done in a cheerful, easy-on-the-eyes style that adds a ton towards making the game enjoyable to play.

While this is a game that can very easily be played with no music during a commute or, ahem, a meeting, the soundtrack really deserves a listen. Multitalented composer Jaybot7, who is also the brains behind the witty stories and dialogue for several PDAmill games, has reworked themes from previous Arvale games to give each character his own mix, and he’s hit another home run.

Conclusion

Melonchi Minecarts is a great little puzzle game, perfect for picking up for a few minutes but engrossing enough for longer sessions. The puzzle concept is just different enough from others out there to be a new challenge, and the variety of skill levels along with the two play mode options are a terrific touch. While gameplay is fun and addicting, it’s the sound and visuals that set this puzzle game apart.

Vital Stats

Melonchi Minecarts is available for Pocket PC at PDAmill’s website for $14.95.

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