Paradise Quest

What’s your idea of paradise? A lush valley filled with all manner or flora and fauna? A tropical beach, with white sand and light blue water stretching out as far as the eye can see?

Or is it just a lazy afternoon spent in your favourite pub, speaking with friends and quaffing?

Regardless of which is closest to your own notion of paradise, they each share a common quality - a total lack of stress and frustration.

It’s something that I-play could learn from with regard to Paradise Quest, for while their match-three puzzler is both bright and fun it throws in a few too many irritating elements to be labelled an Android gamer’s paradise.

The premise of the game is to restore a ruined tropical island, addressing one element at a time (such as a dried up lake or a mangled forest) by completing levels and gathering resources.

This is achieved in time-honoured match-three tradition. It plays very similarly to the Jewel Quest series, and you must switch variously shaped tiles (assorted natural objects such as tree stumps and avocados) in order to match rows of three or more.

It’s a well worn system, but Paradise Quest makes a number of interesting tweaks to the formula. Most interestingly, each level is a sprawling affair that’s way too big for your Android screen to contain.

As such, you have to scroll across it by completing matches in the appropriate area of the screen, which causes the view to pan accordingly. The ultimate aim is to collect two ancient artefacts by breaking through the surrounding barriers (achieved by making matches on each of the squares) before the timer ticks down to zero.

Unfortunately, this timer rather goes against the gentle explorative spirit that otherwise permeates the game. It can be maddening – particularly on the stifling, borderline unfair night levels – to rack up huge chaining scores, only to be undone through not finishing the obligatory two-emblem task in sufficient time.

This is made worse by the fact that large chain reactions – which you’d think would be a positive thing – serve to hamper your progress as time ticks down.

The game also has a horrible habit of throwing lots of new elements your way without a satisfactory explanation of what they mean or how you should make use of them.

Then there are the technical issues. We played the game on our G1 (running Android 1.5) where the performance was less than satisfactory. During multiple chains, things would tend to slow to a crawl.

This could well be an issue with the aging G1 and/or version 1.5 – indeed, we’ve read reports of the game running fine on newer handsets – but it’s certainly worth noting for those of you tied into a lengthy G1 contract.

The other matter worth considering is the controls. I-play has opted for a two-touch approach – touch both of the adjacent tiles you wish to swap. This seemed a little unresponsive, particularly when trying to select tiles that were on the very edge of the screen.

Again, this is possibly in part a hardware issue, but regardless of responsiveness the control method lacks the fluidity of the drag-to-swap control methods we’ve experienced in certain other match-three games on certain other touchscreen devices.

Ultimately, Paradise Quest is an entertaining, feature-packed match-three puzzler that’s worthy of consideration if you’re a fan of the genre. But it’s just a little too frustrating to play for its own good, and a few too many elements have been thrown into the mix without careful consideration for gameplay balance.

Not quite gaming paradise, then, but certainly a pleasant excursion for fans of the match-three genre.