Jewel Quest Review

The Setup

Jewel Quest puts you in the shoes of an explorer exploring the ruins of an ancient Mayan civilization. Along the way you’ll uncover buried artifacts and solve puzzles that I guess maybe the Mayans left sitting out in the open. I really don’t know. Jewel Quest is a matching game with an Indiana Jones theme, complete with adventuresome font and all. After a few stages, you’ll complete a level and uncover an artifact. After I beat the first level I acquired this weird face statue. I’m not sure what it did, if anything, and it was kind of an ugly statue. In Jewel Quest, your objective is to turn the entire board gold. Every time you complete a row of three or more relics, the spaces underneath that row turn gold. Once the entire board is gold, you beat the stage. This can get incredibly difficult when you have one odd square in the corner that still isn’t gold. The more relics in your chain, you the more points you get. If you don’t make a move for a long time, the game will automatically give you a hint by briefly animating two relics that could be swapped. You’re also timed, which is displayed in the form of a dragon sticking his bar-like tongue out. The bar gradually decreases into the dragon’s mouth as you play. If you run out of time on a certain stage, you lose a life, and you have to start over. Once you complete a stage, you get an added bonus based on how much time you have left. The only other way to lose a life is to run out of any possible moves. I’m told this is possible but very rare. You gain a new life every 50,000 points.

Chain Reactions

When you complete a row, more relics drop down. Often times they cause chain reactions. A LOT of chain reactions. When I first played, I thought it was utterly ridiculous how many points I was racking up through no fault of my own. Despite the free points, these can get incredibly annoying, especially considering you have a time limit. There's another reason why random chain reactions aren‘t very good. A lot of times I found myself with a well thought-out plan, dropping a certain relic down to another one that needed it, when relics falling from the top would form rows and take that relic away. It’s incredibly frustrating because you have no way of knowing what sort of relics are going to fall from the top, and there’s really nothing you can do about it.

Visuals and Audio

Jewel Quest doesn’t look bad at all. The graphics are nice for a puzzler, and the sound works good too. I honestly found myself digging the jungle beat music.

Wrap-Up

Jewel Quest is honestly nothing more than reheated tripe utilizing a different theme. Don’t let the nice visuals and music fool you, this game isn’t that fun.

Play Jewel Quest

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