WHO THE HELL?
Royal Match is a match-three game developed by Dream Games. Before I can say if it's any good, here’s my first wrinkle: Who is Dream Games?
On their company website, they describe themselves as “a leading mobile gaming company founded in 2019”. I don’t know how you become a leader with one mobile game in an established genre, but okay Dream, let’s see about that.
How do I know they have so many? On top of seeing several before this (since I’m too lazy to install AdBlock and too poor for YouTube Premium), when I started this post I wanted a screencap of one of these ads that I remembered seeing. Instead, I found a playlist of a whole freaking 95 ads, and none of them were even the one I was looking for.
So, this is where I am at...unemployed, reviewing phone games that run ads through other phone games, questioning every life decision that led me to this point, but hey I’ve never been accused of discretion before so I guess I’m still in the clear.
WHAT THE HELL?!
First thing first: This is, obviously, a match 3 game. If you haven’t played or at least heard of Bejeweled or Candy Crush (firstly I don’t actually believe you, but) here’s the game:
Swap the places of two colored objects (in this case yellow crowns, red books etc) on a grid. If you make a combination of three or more it will eliminate the objects, which will be replaced with different ones.
Making combinations of 4 or more will net you a power-up, be it a propeller orb, explosive barrel, or the all-powerful rainbow orb, each of which has a special effect when swapped with other objects or each other.
A set number of static objects will be placed on your grid. Make combinations or use power-ups near these objects to destroy or collect them in a set number of turns, and you win, thus scoring a “ROYAL MATCH".
Each royal match will take you around a minute but there is no time limit on the main progress stages. you earn gives you the stars currency which is used to purchase cosmetic upgrades to the castle, aka the in-game lobby. Purchasing all of the upgrades for an area will net you rewards like start-of-stage power-ups and gold to buy lives or extra turns with.
That was the boring way to say it.
The way the game presents itself is more like “I combined five crowns into a magical rainbow orb and smashed that MF in a barrel of TNT, filling the room with even more explosives, and blowing that ugly china hutch to high heaven AND collecting the mail at the same time...somehow. Then I trimmed the bushes by flying three helicopters into them kamikaze style! How does this relate to rebuilding the kingdom? Hell if I know! But I won stars and I got to spend the to install a pizza parlor in my castle! Let’s play another! Big explosions! Fun Noises! Smash! Smash! Smash! Oh...I’m out of turns...and gold...better get the credit card out.”
More on THAT a bit later.
There is something of a very bare-bones story. The sovereign of this land (King Robert according to Dream’s website) is a tremendous goobery ditz who only has two subjects, those being his butler and his dog. King Dufus the IIIVXXIIVI here, either through minimal attention span or tremendous alcoholism has lost EVERYTHING, and it’s your job to help him rebuild. Again, No, I do not know how lobbing barrels of explosives into medicine cabinets is helping with this endeavor.
That’s about all you need to know about the story and way more than you need to care about.
Also, I’m inclined to believe the dog is the player character as the butler gives you power-ups if you get a win streak and I’ve yet to see the dog appear elsewhere. Also, look at this little dude…he clearly (unlike the king) is very intelligent.
Overall, I have to admit, I initially had far fewer complaints about the game than I was expecting.
The music, though a little repetitive, is clear, good quality, and fits the game perfectly with its goofy overtures of deep brass and woodwind sounds.
The art style is simple, but it is fun and zany. I especially like the animated skits from the in-game events.
Making combinations and using power-ups are both very satisfying, especially when combining two power-ups to cause huge board-spanning explosive effects and flight routines, which is incidentally even more fun when you yell “For Science!” as you do it, or specifically as I do it (not that I would ever do that).
The game has a wholesome feel about, not falling back on suggestively dressed and posed women to get easy clicks, electing to go for a puckish charm instead. Even being the insufferable pervert I am I could appreciate that.
I was certain looking at the promotional material that it wasn't anything like the actual gameplay, but I may have been wrong here too. It was always the same: the king stuck in a precarious situation, like a burning kitchen; a sentient mouse cursor was given the objective of doing simple match 3 tasks to save the king (like breaking the colored objects clogging the sprinkler system). The moves needed to complete this task were always pathetically easy, but the living mouse cursor would fail, allowing the king to be consumed by the flames. The idea was to make the viewer feel smart and superior so that they would try and do better, and thus download the game.
Turns out, every ten stages or so you receive a “King’s Nightmare” level, with one of these scenarios. They play out very much, or sometimes exactly like the ads suggested, albeit slightly more challenging.
And throughout most of the experience, the illusion of challenge was present in the game. By stage 11 I had to occasionally think about my moves, and by stage 35 or so, I’d actually failed a few times. I appreciate losing once in a while, especially when I think this is my fault.
I was having fun. But then, as I played on, I found two BIG problems. They both suck in their own right but coupled together, they managed to retroactively wipe out all the goodwill the game had built up with me in the hours I had been playing.
WHY THE HELL…
The first big issue is, surprise-surprise, monetization.
Now in the game's defense, it isn’t as egregious as others I’ve played. There’s no centralized cash shop, there are no forced ads you have to watch every level, and there are no popups when you first sign on trying to get you to buy every single “limited time!” value pack they can. At the very least these things aren’t in the game yet.
However, if you take a dump on my hot dog bun and call it a hot dog, I’m not eating it. I can appreciate you taking a smaller, less smelly one, but it is what it is, and it’s not a hot dog. Robbing less money from a bank doesn’t make you less guilty of robbing a bank. So in terms of monetization, this game isn’t charming a single rating point out of me.
The game is effectively an arcade machine stealing your quarter, a battlepass system, a subscription model, and a “take out this credit card and get a free gift” scheme, all wrapped into one, then marketed to children.
You have a limited number of lives, one being consumed each time you quit or fail to complete the puzzle in the set number of moves I talked about earlier. You can pay gold, which is earned slowly in game, or quickly with real money purchases, to add to your move allowance or increase your lives.
But once you are out of lives and gold and moves, the game will tell you, “Oh no, you’re about to lose the butler's favor bonus! and these progression items! and this much reward! Would ya like to buy more gold?”
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and then make you shell out the cash or wait thirty minutes for another life, which, if you’re at the higher stages, you will likely just use just to fail again. According to most sources, the game has over 4500 levels with progressing difficulty, so it’s conceivable you will need to spend a lot of gold (and thus time or irl money) to keep moving through them.
On top of this, the game has a battlepass system wherein you pay ten dollars to increase your total number of lives for as many days are left on the battle pass (thus offering FOMO in the form of missed days) and several powerups and gold rewards, with a free version to give you a (lesser) taste of it.
Then on top of that, the game has an Endless Treasure screen you’ll find that offers two free “gifts” and then you can pay $2.99 to get a third item and two more “free” rewards. Is it endless? Does it get more expensive as you pay? I wouldn’t be surprised, but I’ll never know because I’m not going to pay 3 dollars for a few power-ups that could very well be consumed on another loss.
After you take all that into account, in comes issue number two, say hi to your old friend RNG. If you make a single combination, quit the stage, and come back, then you do the exact same combo, the shapes dealt to you can be completely different. Why is this important? Because, at that point, it’s impossible to know if you lost because you’re unlucky, or if the game is intentionally dealing you shapes that will make you lose, drain your resources, and make you more likely to pay to keep playing? Given this research by Playliner, I get the strong sense that it’s the latter.
So
maybe the next time you see the purple-clad King Robert in a burning
building, or about to get eaten by a dragon, or skydiving without a
parachute, I want you to think back to those royal match ads, with
the sentient mouse cursor who couldn’t complete such basic tasks to save him, I want you to ask yourself “Was that imaginary
player really too stupid to complete elementary level puzzles to save thing King's life, or did they
know what he really was and choose to let him burn.”
