Adventure Xpress
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iOS
| Adventure Xpress

There's a glut of puzzling RPGs on the App Store. The sort of game where you match stuff to whomp monsters in the face with magically enchanted weapons.

Adventure Xpress is Adult Swim throwing its hat into that crowded ring. The template is a familar one. The bottom of the screen is a grid made up of multiple different coloured gems. The top is a scrap between your character and a monster.

Match the gems in bunches of three and your character takes a swing. Bigger combos deal bigger damage. The fight continues until either you or your foe have lost all of your hit points. Rinse and repeat.

While it may not be original there's a nice rhythm to Adventure Xpress, and a few tricks that make it stand out. Plus the energy system is almost non-existent for the first couple of hours, and when it does pop up it's barely noticeable.

A large parcel

Rather than setting out on a lofty quest to clear the land of monsters, here you play a medieval delivery driver. You're given a package, then wander from town to town until you get to deliver it. Along the way you're accosted by a variety of bandits.

Battles usually occur in groups of two or three, and you need to survive each of the encounters to get the loot at the end.

Different bad guys have different strengths and weaknesses. The plant people don't take as much damage from the green gems, but the ice skeletons and yetis take more from fire. It adds a pretty interesting level of tactics to your matches.

You don't need to clear gems every time you slide a piece, but after every move you'll take some damage. It's still worth shuffling things around to get to use the powerful shiny gems that appear on the grid.

These blast out energy when they're cleared. Some are bombs that clear the space around them while others fire out horizontal, vertical, or crossed lines of fire.

Chain mail

It's worth using these because your weapon has a critical move. This unlocks after you've cleared a set number of gems from the board in a single turn. Clear enough and the grid flashes and you can do more damage.

You also have spells. These supplement your moves and build up as you clear gems. They're elemental as well, so you need to use them wisely and check the sort of enemy you're fighting.

You earn cash as you fight, and when you level up can spend it on better gear. You get a couple of choices each level, and figuring out which will work best for you is part of the fun. You can upgrade your spells and fill them up at the start of a fight as well.

Press to send

Things do get a little grindy, and I had to head back to earlier fights a couple of times to toughen up for scraps I couldn't finish. You lose a potion when you die, and they take some time to regenerate, but it's not that annoying.

There's enough in Adventure Xpress that you'll want to keep playing. It's well put together, and while there are walls, they're easy enough to navigate if you're willing to put some time in.

Adventure Xpress

A funny, entertaining puzzler. Adventure Xpress might not be the freshest game on the App Store, but it's fun all the same
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.