Hands on with Vivendi's Slide N' Loop
Bejeweled slipped into something more comfortable
If only Darwin was alive today. He could ditch the study of chaffinch beaks, and just focus on the evolution of puzzle games. It has to be the most competitive sector of the games industry, as everyone tries, in vain in seems, to come up with another Tetris-sized monster.
Where would Darwin put Paris Hilton's Diamond Quest in his taxidermy, for example? Meanwhile we're definitely on a Bejeweled tip when it comes to Slide N' Loop, Vivendi's latest colour-matching game.
Itself a twist on the SLOOP mobile puzzle game from developer Puzzoo, Slide N' Loop brings character into the mix, as Aztec-looking girl, Zia, has to find the four broken pieces of a medallion, by moving around various gem-ladened grids and creating three, four, five and six-sized groupings of the same symbols to rack up the points that mean prizes, or in this case, help for her village.
The title of the game comes from the fact that you have to loop Zia around the edges of the grid in order to move (or slide) rows and columns of symbols into place to get your multi-gem groupings.
In the opening stages of the game, each move sees you shift each row or column one space along in order to create the necessary combinations, which results in those blocks disappearing, and new ones falling into place, with potential combo-creating possibilities. But with only three lives (one of which is lost every time you unsuccessfully slide a line) and no timer, Slide N' Loop plays very much the thoughtful puzzler.
Further into the game however, nasty crab-like opponents are thrown onto the grid's edges. These also move the rows and columns, meaning you have to be much quicker to spot and make your plays before the opportunity is gone. Also adding dynamism, is the subtle change whereby when you start to slide a line of symbols, it continues moving until you press the action button again to stop it in an appropriate position.
How this stop-go system will work in the context of a complete game, we'll have to wait and see. But certainly Slide N' Loop is a nice-looking game, as you can see for yourself in this introductory video:
