Num Yumms review - A super-light Threes inspired puzzler
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iOS
| Num Yumms

Num Yumms is the kind of light, cute, grid-based number game that's clearly in thrall to Threes.

I can understand that. Four years on, there's still nothing quite like Asher Vollmer's masterpiece on the App Store. Or rather, there's plenty like it, but none of it is as good.

It's both unfortunate and unsurprising, then, to note that Num Yumms doesn't get close.

Tastes familiar

Like Threes, you're dragging on a simple number-filled grid (here 4x5) in a bid to combine numbers, which in turn creates cute new anthropomorphic creatures.

However, the rest of the game diverges quite a lot from its inspiration. Here you're shifting one of said creatures around the grid, gobbling up the numbered blocks that add up its own total.

Say you've got a 9-scoring Mosqoose (a sweet little green fellow). You might want to chart a course to gobble up two 3s, a 2 and a 1. This value needs to be hit within five turns, and if you over or under-score in that time you lose part of your health bar.

I should probably note that the latter UI element is almost completely obscured by the notch on the iPhone X. Seriously developers, Apple's flagship phone has been on the market for approaching five months now.

Amuse bouche

Soon enough on this never-ending puzzle, you'll encounter special blocks that change value with every turn, or swap out all of the remaining blocks. You'll also encounter minus numbers.

But that doesn't do much to cover the fact that Num Yumms's gameplay is wafer thin. You're simply adding up a bunch of simple numbers in highly linear fashion.

Threes was pretty simple at first glance, of course. But the reason people are still playing that game today is that it actually required real strategic thought to get into the higher numbers.

Indeed, those higher numbers in Threes served to ramp the game up, granting a clear sense of progress and accomplishment. Here you regularly unlock new creatures seemingly at random, and it's difficult to care because it doesn't feel like you've really done anything to earn them.

Don't get me wrong, Num Yumms is a thoroughly pleasant numerical puzzler to play. But that instant smack of intuitive pleasure it provides is about all you're going to get from the game.

Num Yumms review - A super-light Threes inspired puzzler

A sweet, accessibly number puzzler that provides very little of substance once you've got the gist of it
Score
Jon Mundy
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.