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Bejeweled and AlchemyReviewed By: Kirk Hiner Review Date: July 15, 2002
Generally I don't critique my fellow critiquers. This is mainly because I don't really consider them my fellows since I don't make a living doing this. Were I to publish a book of my worst games of all time, not even my family would be interested. That's the way it is with computer game reviews. Although I've met many others from the Mac web (all of whom are great guys), and although I've now shocked friends and family both by reaching the age of 32, I can't shake the image that all game reviewers are skinny, fourteen-year-old kids in anime t-shirts. Now, with movie reviewers, I'm stuck with the stereotype of forty- to fifty-year-old men who--save for Roger Ebert--automatically hate movies that require imagination to appreciate, unless the movie is a Disney cartoon, in which case the reviewer just assumes it's great because it's Disney and it's for kids and that's why he didn't get it. In short, I vehemently avoid movies promoted with the phrase, " 'Fun for the whole family!' raves..." Bejeweled and Alchemy, were I inclined to say it, is fun for the whole family. Now, bear in mind that I currently have a different take on "family" than do most. Since it's just me and my wife, "fun for the whole family" is a Friday the 13th movie, or maybe some even lower budget gore fest like Blood Diner or Dead Alive. For this family, there's nothing at all fun about yet another asinine Land Before Time borefest or a [expletive deleted] talking pig movie. So, when I say that Bejeweled and Alchemy is fun for the whole family, I basically mean that I wasn't bored with it, Tieraney found it challenging, and my mom loved it. Bejeweled, I've just learned, is the hardest word to type in the English language. I have yet to type it successfully on the first attempt, which I think may now be my test for a game's difficulty/frustration level. In Bejeweled, you're given a game board with 64 gems of various colors and shapes. Your task is to swap them--either left/right or up/down--to place three or more matching gems in a row. These will then disappear and the gems above them will slide down to fill the void. There will always be 64 gems on the screen, so you don't really suffer from what top clinicians around the world are now calling "Tetris Anxiety," or "the fear of watching insurmountable obstacles stack up before you." In Bejeweled, your task is to simply make sure there will always be gems that can be swapped. Well, I say "simply," but that's not always the case. Planning ahead to create collections of four or more, or to create multiple collections by moving just one gem, greatly increases the point value. Quite often, the best gems to swap are not the first ones you see. Suddenly, there's strategy involved, and strategy is rarely simple.
Hint buttons; they're kind of like the answers in the back of the geometry books in high school. The music of Bejeweled, composed by some guy (gal? group?) named Skaven, is tremendous. It sounds like the kind of music you'd hear in the background at a science or health museum if said music had been recorded by an 80s super band comprising Thomas Dolby, Peter Schilling and Roger Taylor in his solo career. It sounds...scientific. Smart. I can't help but feel I would've scored higher on my ACTs had this music been playing in the background. I actually feel bad for games like this, since they're handicapped by the infestivity of the genre. Normally, when the packaging boasts of features such as, &Click & Drag Interface makes gem swapping very easy," that's a red flag. I mean, boy, don't we all hate those games in which gem swapping requires a 125 page manual? It's kind of like a DVD that lists "chapter access" as a feature. There's really not a lot about which to celebrate here, but do you know what? The game's still fun despite the lack of key marketing phrases. It's easy to have a good time with Bejeweled. In fact, I keep taking unnecessary breaks from this review to play it some more. That doesn't happen often. Now, I enjoy Bejeweled. My wife, on the other hand, prefers Alchemy. I'd like to see some web stats that tell which of the two games is more popular online. I'll be curious to see which is more popular with my mom. Alchemy is, at its most basic, a tile matching game. It starts you off with a board of 72 blank squares, which you must both fill up and clear of playing pieces. The pieces come in various shapes and colors, and each piece must match--either in color or shape--each piece it touches. The pieces have to be placed next to another (diagonally doesn't count), and unplayable pieces have to be discarded. Discard too many without laying any down, and the game ends. Once an entire row or column of pieces has been laid down, it changes color and the pieces clear out. The goal is to change the color of all 72 spaces on the board. In other words, each space must at one point have had a playing piece on top of it. No problem at first, but the more pieces you lay down without also clearing them out, the more difficult it becomes to lay down new pieces. To compound the confusion, higher levels start bringing in new shapes and colors, making it more difficult to match. Some special pieces can match anything or destroy pieces already on the board, but they come infrequently, so it's never wise to hope for one in a time of need. This is why I don't enjoy games of this type. For me, they become too much a game of chance...will I get the piece I want? Why does it keep giving me this piece? Is this game rigged, or something? It never gives me what I need! Anxiety.
The music for Alchemy is also composed by Skaven, and again contributes greatly to the game. The graphics are comparable to those of Bejeweled, yet also come across as a bit more sophisticated. Both games retain the look of those from which they're inspired, but Alchemy feels more modern; more OS X and less Sega Saturn. The games ran very well in OS X, provided I didn't try to play in full screen mode. Plenty of anomalies appeared, so I quickly switched back to window mode and contented myself with that. When I booted up in OS 9 to play, none of my on screen commands (clicking and such) would work until I clicked the mouse on the menu bar. Weird. If I clicked options, for example, nothing would happen. But if I next clicked on any item in the menu bar, the Options window would then pop open. All of this behavior has carried over from the gold master that I previewed. Hopefully, an update is in the works, if only to prove to me that the fault lies with the game and not with my computer.
Bejeweled and Alchemy are the first games released through MacPlay's value series, and I can't think of better titles to spearhead the campaign. These games are perfect for the general consumer, providing easy gameplay that's equal parts challenging, frustrating, and addictive. They're also fun for my mother, which is as close as I'll come to sounding like a second-rate movie reviewer trying desperately to get his name in a movie trailer. Hopefully.
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If you really need some sort of anxiety to feel comfortable, you can always play the game in time trial mode. Here, it's a race to reach the next level before time expires. You reach the next level by completing the proper amount of matches. At moments, this proved tremendously easy. But my mind would then either go blank, my eyes would fail me, or the game would get cruel, because I suddenly wouldn't be able to find anything. In a panic, I'd click the hint button, then smack myself for not seeing what should've been obvious.
As with Bejeweled, Alchemy can be played in either regular or time trial modes. My preference here depended upon how much time I had to play the game. If I had half an hour to kill, I played regular mode. If I had half a minute, time trial.