Fashionably Late Reviews - Chains

Title: Chains | Developer: 2D Engine | Platform: PC | Genre: Puzzle

Puzzle games that require you to match three colors have been done to death at this point, but every once in a while someone does something interesting with the idea. Chains is such a game, but rather than settling with one slightly different mechanic, Chains does something new every level.

The base game is nothing more than dragging your mouse along touching bubbles of the same colors to link them together and form chains. As long as the next bubble touches the one you're on now, you can extend the chain. When you're done, you simply let go up the mouse button and the bubbles disappear, assuming you have at least three. A very simple concept, but because the stages are so diverse it works really well.


You start out with a simple goal to get 100 bubbles cleared, but then the game changes for each of the twenty levels. In one level, the bubbles are falling down a tunnel and they need to be cleared away before the tunnel gets too clogged. In the level Coat Hanger, the bubbles fall on either side of the coat hanger object which swings if the weight becomes unbalanced. Another level puts point values on each bubble and requires an exact score to be achieved in a single chain.

All of the levels are different from each other, with only a couple of types repeating, this keeps Chains from getting stale. But the game does have a huge difficulty spike at stage 11. The final ten levels are much harder than the others, and at times come down to luck. A few are on the easy side, but overall it can get a little bit frustrating.



Chains is definitely not for everyone, but if you are a fan of weird, indie puzzle games, try it out. It's only $5 on Steam and is worth your time if you give it a chance. It's a very interesting look at how much you can do with one simple gameplay element.

You can download a demo of the game at the developer's website, located here.