Supermagical review (iOS / Universal)

♫ “Strong magic that bust all your wishes”

10 word description: Action match-3 with mini-games, upgrades and 71 levels.

10 word review: Horizontal Puzzle Bobble with unfocussed stop-start gameplay and IAPs.

You will like this if you enjoy: Puzzle Bobble / Bust-A-Move with lots of odd interruptions and distractions from the core game.

The good news: Graphics and sound are pretty good. There’s plenty of content, however…

The bad news: For me, the game loses focus on the core gameplay – the Puzzle Bobble / Bust-A-Move style match-3 action – continually interrupting the flow of these sections with hidden object hunts on the game map, obligatory shop visits for items to unlock levels, redundant “guess the right phrase” conversations with opponent NPCs, various disconnected mini games, etc. I know that this could alternatively be interpreted as “loads of content” but it seems mostly unnecessary to me, as if the makers are trying to tick as many boxes as possible, including the one that says you must have IAPs in every iOS game. The conversation battles in particular are quite bizarre, offering up the Puzzle Bobble game as a kind of punishment for failing to guess the correct conversation option… strange indeed.

Arcadelife verdict: There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with basing a game on the Puzzle Bobble / Bust-A-Move concept, although switching it to horizontal mode doesn’t really improve it. One or two additions, such as the spell upgrades, would have been fine but the overload of disjointed game elements does more to break the basic game than add any additional value or entertainment. For me, it stopped being fun quite quickly and that’s a shame because I really liked Puzzle Bobble and was expecting to feel the same way about Supermagical. The decent visuals and sounds, plus fairly reliable controls, save the overall rating from being a total disaster. I’ve marked content down a bit because, for me, more is not better in this instance.

Arcadelife rating

Visuals – 9/10
Audio – 8.5/10
Controls – 8/10
Content – 7/10
Fun – 5/10
Final rating – 75/100

Rating categories explained here.

Version reviewed by Arcadelife is 1.0.4

Gala Pocket website link

Arcadelife played and reviewed this game on:
iPad (iOS 5.1.1)