Tumblestone (Switch) Review

“Just one more”. “This is freaking impossible!”. “Oh, actually that was pretty obvious”. These are the things you will be thinking (or yelling) while playing Tumblestone. Tumblestone is a match 3 puzzle game – no don’t click off, it’s actually different! It’s hard to give a comparison of this game, with the easiest example being a mix of Zuma & Tetris. There’s a set number of blocks (Tumblestones) on the board and you need to match 3 to clear it out. While maybe not as incredibly innovative as Puyo Puyo Tetris, it’s certainly a breath of fresh air for the genre.

Tumblestone has a plethora of modes to select from, so let’s start with the Story Mode. How do you make a story for a puzzle game as simple as Tumblestone? Well, the developers must have realised that because it doesn’t take itself at all seriously. Somebody has messed with the tumblestones, requiring you to work your way through hundreds of levels to restore balance to the world – or something like that. It’s not taken seriously at all, but introduces a variety of different characters and environments to puzzle your way through. There’s 12 worlds with 30 levels in each and to mix the gameplay around a little after each world you unlock a modifier.

These range from simplistic, Toggling Blockers that block the middle row every other turn, to outright evil – Column Flipping will turn the entire column upside down after you shoot the third tumblestone. These outright mess with your mind, requiring you to think in different ways to clear out an already somewhat challenging game.

If you don’t feel like rushing through over 300 levels of story mode, in the Extra’s menu you can enable Party Mode. All progress for quests and EXP will be disabled, however all modifiers and character will be unlocked for your co-op enjoyment. There’s 3 Multiplayer modes available to chose from – Puzzle Race, Battle & Tug of War.

Puzzle Race is simple enough, 4 players (or bots if you lack friends) each have the same board and race to be the first one to clear it out. Battle will generate a random puzzle for all players, and every set of 3 cleared will add one line to your opponents boards until they are eventually crushed by the tumblestones. Lastly, Tug of War features the same puzzle for everyone, separated 4 rows at a time. Clearing out this section will add another 4 rows to a seemingly random opponent until one player is the first to clear the board entirely.

You may have played Tumblestone on the Wii U and wondering why I haven’t mentioned anything regarding the online modes – simply put, this was cut on Switch. Just local multiplayer is available this time around, but thankfully the devs have slashed the price a bit to make it a bit more appealing. Bots are available to play with, and have 5 difficulty settings to match your own ability.

Don’t have friends around? Not interested in playing against Bots? Stuck on a Story Mode Puzzle? Well, the Arcade mode has you covered. Marathon is self explanatory. Keep matching up tumblestones until you eventually get overwhelmed. Heartbeat has the same premise, however to make things a little more heartracing the rows will constantly move down the board, not giving you a lot of time to think about your next play. Lastly, Infinipuzzle will give you a small section of board to complete that will infinitely reset after you clear it. This is the only Arcade Mode that will allow the use of modifiers to keep it interesting and also giving you a decent practice of them.

The presentation of this game will definitely turn off some people. At first glance, it might look like a mobile game ported and in many ways you’re not incorrect. While also released on PC, PS4, Wii U etc the game has rather awful UI and presentation issues. These are simple things, after progressing through one of the world’s, a vertical transition takes place and bunched up and duplicated all the icons. How that got past QA, I have no idea as it’s happened every single transition and not just a one off glitch.

Also the button prompts are… lacking at best. After completing one of the arcade modes, the two screen prompts are Y (Change Character) and A (Play Again). B isn’t listed at all but that’s the only way to exit back to the menu. While gamers would usually expect this for the more casual audience they are trying to hit, it might be rather confusing.

While Switch already has a lot of games available to suck up your time, Tumblestone should be on your radar if you’re a fan of tile matching games. It’s a unique enough take on the genre, and while Puyo Puyo Tetris will fight for your attention, coming in at $20 makes it’s great value for money.

Rating: 4/5