I was going to write this review for Triple Town 4 hours ago. The main problem is that I have been playing Triple Town for 4 hours… and then an additional 200 according to my Steam Account.
Let me tell you why this is a good thing.
Triple Town is an addictive little strategy puzzle game from Spry Fox games. As a player, it is your job to build a town. You do this by gathering important resources, which will let you build, upgrade, and decorate said town. But, like any starting town, you need to lay foundations. In Triple Town you do this by matching resources by groups of 3, starting with easily accessible and common resources. For example, to start your town, you need to build houses for people to populate it. Match three piles of grass together to create a bush. Easy enough. Matching 3 bushes then gets you a tree. Good for you now keep going. Matching three trees gets you a small house. It takes a while to get to this point so while it may sound easy, you also need to know that space and area become your ultimate hindrance as you need the appropriate amount of space in order to lay all these pieces down.
That’s when things get a bit hairy AND fun.
As a player you need to properly manage the open spaces you have available on your game board, which is typically a 4 by 4 or even a 16 by 16 tile set. The pieces you get, ranging from a piece of grass to trees to houses, appear at random. If you don’t manage to get the piece you need, you must still lay it in an open spot upon the board in order to acquire a new building material. But you must be careful where you lay it because every single piece slowly encroaches upon your available space, which then hinders your ability to make groups of three. So not only does matching pieces become crucial to building more complex structures and scoring more points, it also helps you free up your board so you can build new structures and lay down new pieces.
While there is no real danger during game play (as a causal puzzle game you are not attacked by ner-do-wells and there isn’t even a timer) you must plan your next move carefully. You can’t always bank on getting the piece you need to create a group of three and so you must play the odds. The odds in this case is that you will most likely get a ‘starter’ or lower grade puzzle piece, such as a piece of grass 61% of the time, a bush 15%, a tree 2%, and so on.
And so, you’ll find yourself sitting there on your tablet, phone, or STEAM account, quietly and calmly matching tiles, creating new tiles, matching those new tiles, creating even newer and more rare tiles and then you will causally glance at your watch and realize that 4 hours have gone by. And, truth be told, you won’t mind.
Triple Town may be one of the most addictive games to come out in the past 5 years and I am most thoroughly and happily ensnared by it. It is easy to pick up and get lost in but it is also calming, challenging and surprisingly satisfactory. And now, if you will excuse me, I’m getting back to my Triple Town game
