Bear Winter adds tough survival elements to match-3 puzzling, out on iOS and Android
The bears are coming for you
Nevercenter has released its survival match-3 puzzler Bear Winter on iOS and Android.
Yep, you read that right, this is a survival game and a match-3 puzzler in one. Don't expect any shiny gems or brightly coloured enthusiasm here.
The idea is to survive a harsh winter in the Russian mountains among the ice bears for as long as you can. You'll need fire, acorns, and arrows to do that.
You're given a 3x3 grid to match icons within at the bottom of the screen. You can see another 4x4 grid of icons above - these will fall into the bottom grid after you've made some room.
Bear Winter is fittingly tough. You can only defeat bears by matching three bear icons in a row (diagonally, horizontally, or vertically). If you only match one or two bear icons then you take damage, and you only have four hearts to spare.
Each move you make reduces your heat level by one as well. So you'll need to regularly match three flame icons to warm yourself up, or face freezing to death.
You don't need to match any icons to make a move, you only need to swipe three in a row, any three. So your focus is on setting up the grid so that you avoid bear attacks, primarily. That takes a lot of careful forward planning.
Luckily, you can collect arrows, and when you have enough you can fire them to eliminate all the bears in the grid. You can also match three acorns to restore your health.
If you're up for the challenge (and it certainly is one) then you can download Bear Winter for free on the App Store [download] and Google Play [download].
