Following in the footsteps of pioneering music visualisation games Audiosurf and Beat Hazard comes Turba, a match-3 style puzzle game with a musical twist from indie developer Binary Takeover.
Match-3 puzzle games are so ubiquitous these days that you’d be forgiven for dismissing Turba as yet another clone, but Turba has a trick unique to Match-3 games – the gameplay is solidly built on a musical foundation, music which can be chosen from a player’s personal library.
On a basic level, players must match three coloured blocks from a random assortment of green, yellow, blue and red. Anything more than three awards bonus points. Instead of the usual time constraints of ticking seconds, Turba uses beat detection to set the pace of gameplay. Depending on the difficulty chosen, the blocks disappear off the bottom of the screen after a certain number of musical beats.
There are three game modes to choose from – Freeplay fills the game board with blocks which then fill from the top of the screen as blocks are cleared. This mode is mainly for practice (and fun) and there are no online high score boards. When playing the ‘Ascend’ and ‘Descend’ modes the player has the ability to move columns or shuffle columns, adding a tactical layer.
Further adding to the strategic elements of gameplay are the special powers which are chosen before each round and have various affects on the game board, such as the ability to change a square to a desired colour. Familiar match-3 elements appear, such as timed bombs which will explode after a certain number of beats and render blocks around them unusable.
Being a game all about high scores, there are numerous ways to multiply one’s score. Clearing blocks on each beat of a song tests a player’s musical ear, and multipliers are earned through consecutive ‘beat hits.’ Clearing all colours in a single combo, or clearing combo’s that touch also adds to the score. Special silver coloured blocks also multiply scores based on their inclusion in a combo.
In fact there are numerous ways to rack up a big score, and for the competitive types, all of this will prove worth it as there are online high score boards on which to test their mettle. At the end of each round there is a detailed score breakdown with various statistics presented.
For the achievement hoarders, the Steam version has 20 to strive for. Speaking of the Steam version, it is currently discounted from US$9.99 to US$8.99 (±R68).
Supported music formats include MP3 (.mp3), FLAC (.flac), Ogg (.ogg), Monkey’s Audio (.ape), CD Audio (.cda), and Musepack (.mpc). Last.fm is also supported.
Having played through the demo I can say that I personally found the game to be quite addictive, and it worked well with various forms of music, from dance to metal. Although the proven match-3 gameplay mechanic might appear a bit stale to some, Binary Takeover has provided a unique twist that should set their title apart from the melee of match-3 clones.
For those who can’t get enough of the match-3 puzzle genre, then this is definitely a title to investigate. Be sure to grab the demo from their website and give this musical match-3 game a spin.
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