Review: Plantastic. The King Of Color Matching Games Strikes Again!

Posted by: dgoldring on Nov 14 2007

 

Michael Jackson was the King of Pop.  Run DMC was the King of Rock.  Howard Stern was the King of All Media, and Leonardo DeCaprio was the King of the World for one brief scene in Titanic.  And, of course, Astraware is the King of the Color  Matching Games.  In fact, the name Astraware has practically become synonymous with games like Bejeweled, Glyphs, and Cubix — the stalwarts of their selections.  Now, they have added a new game to their library.  Along with PalmStorm, Astraware has presented their latest offering: Plantastic.

 

Installation and Registration: Download the game and install it in the usual way.  Simply run the installer from your desktop and it will load via Activesync (or Windows Mobile Device Center if you prefer).  You can play up to ten games for free.  After that, you must purchase the game and register in order to keep going.

Overview and Gameplay: Plantastic is a color matching game unlike any I have ever played.  To begin with, it does not involve little colored balls which must be manipulated around the screen.  Instead, your mission involves flowers.  Plain and simple.  All you need to do is plant them, attempting to plant flowers of the same color together in order to form bouquets.  Once a bouquet is formed (by planting enough flowers in a group), the bouquet will be removed from the garden and placed in the vase at the top of the screen.  A counter on the vase tells you how many more flowers you must place in it in order to clear the level and advance to the next one. 

Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it?  Of course, there is a catch.  You cannot simply place the next flower anywhere on the board.  It must be placed in relation to the previous flower.  There are five different modes, each with a different placement pattern (ghost images show your next available moves).  In order to do well in this game, you will need to plan a few moves ahead and pay attention to how the placement of the current flower will affect your options for the next flowers.

 

The game starts with three colors, however, an additional color will be added every five levels, until there are a total of six colors in the game.  Additionally, as you reach the higher levels, the speed of the game will increase significantly, with flowers dropping into your basket (waiting to be planted) at an increasing rate of speed.  Finally, although the early levels require only ten flowers be added to the vase in order to clear the level, later levels will more than double this, requiring over 20 flowers to clear the level. 

While I enjoyed the originality of the game, particularly the various modes of play, like many color matching games, I found the repetitious gameplay grew somewhat monotonous after a while.   Even though the games gets faster and more challenging, the basic gameplay involves taking the same action over and over again.  This is where color matching games typically lose me.  In the highest, most difficult level, you are required to perform the exact same actions as in the first level. 

Nonetheless, Astraware and PalmStorm do an admirable job attempting to quell this boredom factor by introducing numerous special items which will appear throughout the game.  Some may help you while others can hurt.  The first one you will find is the mushroom, which will block you from planting on that space.  As you progress, you will find other item, such as: Joker Flowers which match to flowers you’ve already planted and boost your bouquet size, Super Trowel which allows you to plant a flower anywhere in your garden, and Bad Weather, which allows you to zap clear a 3 by 3 area in your garden. 

And, of course, I would be remiss if I failed to mention the other character in the game, The Mole.  The Mole will appear periodically throughout the game.  Whack him, a la Hammerheads and he will go away.  Let him hang around too long, however, and he will start stealing your flowers.

Scoring is based solely upon the bouquets of flowers you remove.  The larger the bouquet, the more points you will earn.  You will not, however, gain or lose points based upon flowers remaining on the board, or based upon the time it takes you to complete a level.  The game ends when either you have no moves left or your flower basket  (that slot on the left which shows the next couple of moves) overfills.

Modes: As I mentioned, there are five different modes.  Each features an increasingly complex planting pattern.  In the first mode, which is the only one to begin unlocked, you can plant in any space which is adjacent to the last flower you planted.  The other four modes can be unlocked when the following milestones have been achieved:

• 2000 points
• level 20
• level 30
• group of 10 or more flowers at a time

I thought these various modes significantly increased the appeal of this game.  Unlocking the different modes became a significant accomplishment unto itself.  Once these modes were unlocked, however, it provided an entirely different game to play, which required a complete revision of all of the strategies which you had developed until that time.

Difficulty: In addition to switching modes, there are also three different levels of difficulty. The gameplay is identical in each difficulty level, however, the number of flowers you will need in order to complete a group increases.  In easy, you will need three flowers, medium requires four, and hard will take five.   In other words, there are actually a total of 15 different Plantastic games to be played.

Graphics: I though the graphics really made this game fun.  Gameplay would not have been affected at all if it had utilized much more utilitarian graphics.  Including well drawn cartoonish graphics with such smooth animation, however, helped create the illusion of a gardener tending to his flowers.  I thought the graphics went a long way toward allowing you to suspend your disbelief and get lost in the illusion of the game. 

Audio: I did not particularly care for the music in this game.  In a way, I felt like it was trying to hard to blend in with the rest of the game.  I muted the the sounds and music and felt that I had a better experience with the game without listening to the music. 

High Scores and Statistics: At the end of each game, you will receive a detailed report with an overview of your performance in the game.  This report shows how you did collecting bouquets ("Flower Finesse")and whacking moles ("Art Of Bashing").

Additionally, each mode maintains the top five scores for each level of difficulty.  This means the game offers a total of 15 different high score tables.

Saving: Saving the game in Plantastic is as easy as quitting.  That’s right!  Just quit the game. The next time you start, you will be given the option of continuing the game in progress.  Perfect.  ‘Nuff said.

Conclusion: I have always had sort of a love-hate relationship with color matching games.  On the one hand, this kind of puzzle/strategy game is extremely challenging, and I love the  intellectual prowess they typically require.  On the other hand, what was enjoyable at the beginning oftentimes becomes monotonous after a few hours of play.  That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed Plantastic.  I thought the addition of various special items throughout the game, and more importantly the use of five different modes of play, helped stave off the monotony factor.  Unlocking the various modes became a goal unto itself in playing the game.  Additionally, since each mode required an entirely new strategy, it is almost like having five entirely different games.  This game is significantly more complex than it initially appeared, proving once again why Astraware is the King of Color Matching Games!

Vital Stats:

Name: Plantastic

Developer: Astraware and PalmStorm

Tested on: Windows Mobile 6 Professional

Also Available: All Windows Mobile touch screen devices, Palm OS

Price: $19.95

Available from: Astraware

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!