Dungeon Hearts Blitz

Given Puzzle & Dragons clones have become more common than sea shells on a beach, any developer attempting a match-three puzzle / battle game needs to make darn sure it offers something tantalising and unique.

Unfortunately Dungeon Hearts Blitz is neither. It's a slow, shallow slog that doesn't reach the standards set by Puzzle & Dragons, let alone surmount them.

Dungeon Hearts Blitz is an offshoot of Dungeon Hearts, another match-three title. While Dungeon Hearts is a bit rough around the edges, it makes a genuine, full-hearted effort to innovate on the match-three puzzle formula by challenging players to make matches on a constantly-scrolling field.

Matches become runes, which in turn are used to attack enemies. Dungeon Hearts isn't perfect, but it adds an interesting dash of the rhythm game genre to its puzzles.

Sadly there's barely a whiff of creativity in Dungeon Hearts Blitz. It apes Puzzle & Dragons through and through - and not particularly well.

As in the original Dungeon Hearts, Dungeon Hearts Blitz puts you in command of several adventurer classes, including warriors, archers, and healers.

Your little band of heroes occupies the top half of the screen. Below them is a grid of differently-coloured orbs.

Each orb corresponds to a class. Warriors are represented by swords, magicians are represented by flames, archers are represented by bows and arrows, and so on.

When you match up three orbs of the same colour, the warrior belonging to those orbs launches an attack. Matching up more than three orbs makes for a stronger attack. When several matches fall into place in a single turn, enemies wind up devastated.

But the fight is not without danger. Each enemy has a countdown that depletes every time you move an orb. When the countdown hits zero, the enemy strikes your hit points.

Puzzle & Dragons lets you make matches by dragging attack and healing orbs around the game board. By "knocking around" orbs, you can make some pretty powerful matches, which makes a big attack on a baddie all the more satisfying.

Dungeon Hearts Blitz, however, only lets you move one orb at a time, which really cuts down on potential excitement.

The game also moves at a snail's pace. Most match-three battle games offer a series of fights against regular peons, then crank up the challenge with a boss fight. But every encounter in Dungeon Hearts Blitz is a slog, even after you spend coins to level up your heroes.

Moreover, the enemies in Dungeon Hearts Blitz are a pretty boring-looking lot. They're animated, true, and so are the heroes, but they're so small it's difficult to appreciate.

Whatever else you can say about Puzzle & Dragons, its monster designs are big, bright, and beautiful. If Dungeon Hearts Blitz can't offer the same, it's doomed to be overlooked.

Forget this place, adventurer

In fact, Dungeon Hearts Blitz may already be in trouble. Like most match-three battle games, it allows players to bring other people's fighters into battle.

However, the assistance roster is lacking in variety or high-level fighters. It's as if a bunch of people downloaded the game and quickly abandoned it.

After playing Dungeon Hearts Blitz for a little while, you'll probably wind up doing the exact same thing. It's slow, unpolished (there are spelling mistakes galore), and simply forgettable.