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Spirit Cleaning Action
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Spooky Dwellers 2 Collector’s Edition is a Match 3 experience that invites you into a spooktacular environment as you face numerous challenges. As the “2” part of its title indicates, this is a follow up offering from the Iki Games Studio. Along with various bonus items, this offering combines Match 3 action, mini game puzzle solving and the construction of a playground for the specific use of all manner of spooky residents within a certain dwelling.
When setting up this title for accepting its challenge, the usual options for creating profiles, adjusting volume levels and playing the game in full screen mode are available. You can also select from various cursor images to represent your mouse pointer. I select the image of that of a skeleton hand which seemed appropriate. When playing the game there is a choice of difficulty levels. I opted for Relaxed mode rather than being restricted by a timer or a limited number of moves to complete each stage.
The background story on which this game is based, concerns your parent’s house which has been invaded by numerous spirits. You set out to clear the house of these invaders and in doing so you encounter a Master Spirit. This entity promises to use its influence to control the other spirits once you have granted it one wish. This wish requires you to building a playground facility for use by the spirits. The finances needed to carry out this construction can be earned through Match 3 game play and completing certain mini game puzzles.
Forming a major part of this title’s action is that of Match 3 game play using the familiar format of grids filled with columns and rows that house a collection of tiles. Various challenges will need to be completed by the usual method of creating groups of 3 or more similarly embellished tiles by the process of switching two adjacent tiles. The challenges tend to involve the removal of a multitude of pumpkins, clearing an area of grass paths and the destruction of certain spooky dweller spirits by using tools supplied with the grid.
In most cases pumpkins can be removed from the grid by creating groups of three or more tiles alongside of them. The resulting explosion will clear the area. When dealing with grass path, you need to be aware that spirit grass can be different colours and you might need to work down through different colours to reach the base green level and remove it. With this removal process the groups needs to be formed on the actual path.
The spooky dweller spirits like to live on the edges of the grid and will need to be removed using a special tool. In order to tackle the problem of spooky dweller spirits you will need to combine the effects of a Talisman of Light feature located on the grid and direct the beam it emits towards the targeted spirit. The beam, which is restricted to a straight line approach, can be directed towards the necessary area by feeding it through other activated Talisman unit and Light Channels which you can turn through 90 degrees to change their input and output facilities. Not all Talisman units and Light Channels are activated and so you might need to check out several units to find the ones you need.
Occupying space on some grids will be elements that can block or assist your progress. Blocking the light beam can be rock tiles, arrow tiles and padlocked tiles. They will have to be removed in their individual way. Assisting you in the removal process are power-up tiles. These tiles can be used to remove a column or row, an adjacent tile, specific tile or a random tile.
Mixed in with the Match 3 levels are a number of mini game puzzle of different types. You could be asked to find various items within a scene or put back together a scene that has been broken up into segments which have been jumped up. Other types of mini game puzzles involve matching face down cards, linking gems together by their colour and taking part in an Angry Bird style of action to gather coins.
Money earned from Match 3 game play and the mini game puzzles can then be used to populate the playground area with facilities that have been categorised as Buildings, Road tiles, Decorations, Tombstones, Trees or Containers. Once purchased these items can be dragged and dropped into position. Options are available to change the angle of view, zoom in and out of the scene and conduct a walk-around Spooky Tour.
With plenty to offer the player, Spooky Dwellers 2 can be downloaded from Gamehouse.com where it is priced at $19.99 or Big Fish Games priced at £15.75. The game requires a 2.0 GHz processor with 3972MB of RAM and 549MB of hard disk space running Windows 7 and later.
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