➤ The saga continues 🎮

The Free Game of the Week is the appointment of Resources4Gaming.com which, every Saturday, puts in the spotlight a downloadable iPhone app at no cost. Not necessarily new titles or leading labels but rather, simply, products that deserve to be taken into consideration. All the more so if you don't have to shell out even a penny.

Just a few weeks ago Candy Crush Saga celebrated half a billion downloads (we repeat: half a billion downloads) and over 150 billion games played by users from all over the world. We can therefore speak of a stratospheric success for the match-3-style puzzle game developed by King, who has also created other titles over time and tried to explore different mechanics, without encountering the same feedback. We therefore waited with curiosity for the release of Farm Heroes Saga, because in many ways it stands as a real sequel to the "game with candy", but adopting a completely new setting, that of the happy farm, and inserting some innovative elements. The game starts from a structure very similar to that of the other productions of the English team, with the traditional path that is enriched with new stages as updates are released and shows us the position and results achieved by our friends on Facebook to whom As usual, we will be able to ask for help when we run out of available lives or need to unlock a new area. From this point of view, things have not changed, in the sense that there is an inevitable obstacle to overcome by using hard currency (gold bars) or by resorting to friendships. On the other fronts, however, we must admit that Farm Heroes Saga appears less demanding than Candy Crush Saga and allows you to play for free with less effort, also thanks to the boosters that recharge over time and therefore do not need to be purchased every time.

Farm Heroes Saga is a cute and fun puzzle game, even if the genre seems to have said it all by now

In the old factory

The elements on the board of Farm Heroes Saga are not candies, as mentioned at the beginning, but objects that have to do with agriculture: apples, carrots, onions (with a lot of tear), strawberries, drops of water and rays of sun, but sometimes also eggs and flowers. These last categories represent one of the variations on the theme: in the case of eggs, three or more must be mated for them to begin to hatch, forming a new type of element, then mate them again so that the shell hatches and a chick comes out ready to run away. ; in the case of flowers, on the other hand, it is necessary to eliminate the adjacent areas in order for the bud to open completely. Furthermore, depending on the stage, there are also modifiers that work on the boxes of the board, such as grass, which multiplies the value of the objects eliminated, or frost, which requires additional maneuvers to make it disappear. To this is added a conformation of the stages that is not always linear but, on the contrary, often angular and complex, capable of further increasing the degree of challenge. Finally, there are the boss fights, which must be completed by collecting a certain amount of a single type of object to cause sufficient damage to the enemy. The system described so far manages to obtain a strong characterization thanks to the importance of combos and bonuses, in this case the multiplication of the value of each single element so that it is possible to more easily reach the quota requested from time to time. Too bad that in the end the match-3-style gameplay does not come out sufficiently refreshed by the operation, which was also conducted with attention and attention to detail. The cause is certainly the high degree of inflation of this genre of puzzle game, which by now on iOS and Android has said it all and would need substantial changes rather than small variations.

Comment

Version tested: iOS (2.0.13) Terminal used: iPhone 5s Price: Free Link App Store Link Google Play Resources4Gaming.com

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Readers (5)

1.5

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Farm Heroes Saga is a match-3-style puzzle game with pleasing graphics and classic musical accompaniment that immediately hits the head, as well as a full-bodied structure and this time less restrictive than in the past in terms of freemium dynamics. The developers have done everything possible to make the experience fresh and fun, including modifiers, the concept of combo and value of the objects, the anomalous boxes and the boards with a complex shape; and it can not be said that the result is despicable, indeed it certainly will make inroads among casual gamers. The point is that this type of product now seems to have given everything, and from a successful team like King it would have been reasonable to expect the introduction of a new vision, at the cost of taking some risks.