Jolly Jam
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iOS
| Jolly Jam

Jolly Jam is a game that's full of surprises. For starters, it's not a hackneyed match-stuff puzzler, despite what your first glance might tell you.

And its monetisation system isn't as angry as you might expect either. I've sunk a good couple of hours into the game and it's not hidden anything behind a pay-or-wait wall yet.

It's very much in the casual puzzling school, but if you're looking for something to scratch a similar itch to Candy Crush, then it's definitely worth a look.

Sweet meat

Rather than matching triplets of brightly coloured symbols, the game sees you dragging boxes around them.

You need to match the blobs at the corners of the box, and any similarly hued jellies within the rectangle are cleared.

Things start off reasonably simple, but soon you'll be hit with move limits, oddly shaped levels, monsters that nom away at your gems, and boss battles that require you to clear certain coloured shapes to chip away at a health bar.

Then there are the requisite ice blocks, trapped gems, and other accoutrements that make finishing the levels that bit tougher.

It's all pretty familiar, but that central mechanic at least is something we don't remember having seen for a while, and it gives an air of freshness to the proceedings.

Tooth rot

As you might expect from a Rovio Stars game, everything is polished to a sparkle. From the level select screen to the annoying 'rate this game' pop up, Jolly Jam is all bright colours and cartoon smiles.

And it might be a little too sickly for some, but if you're willing to look past that sheen, there's actually a pretty interesting puzzler here.

Yes, it's very much a casual game, but it's a casual game done right, and if that's your bag then you'll find a lot here to like.

Jolly Jam

Jolly Jam doesn't do exactly what you expect it do, and in the casual arena that's certainly something to celebrate
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.