Puzzle Craft 2 Review

Developer: Chillingo
Price: FREE
Version Reviewed: 1.0.2
App Reviewed on: iPhone 5

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Overall Rating:

Bigger and better is precisely what you want from any sequel and that’s exactly what you’re getting from Puzzle Craft 2. It’s a little trickier than before but its potent mix of settlement developing and line drawing based match-3 ensures it’s compelling stuff for fans of well made freemium experiences.

As before, your time is evenly split between your settlement and collecting resources. There’s a steady supply of missions to complete, in order to give you some structure in your development. It’s a reasonably cheery affair with cartoon style characters wandering around once you’ve hired them.

In order to build such structures and achieve such goals, you have to acquire the correct resources. This is done through the line drawing game, having you match up resources and watch how they correspond to loftier fare. Collecting plenty of grain leads to bread, while birds lead to eggs, and so forth. There’s a consistent strategy to figuring out what to focus on, as there’s always a choice of what to do.

Early on, you’re merely farming crops with mining and even the ocean playing a role. Puzzle Craft 2 trickle feeds such content so many casual gamers are going to spend a lot of time playing before they see such variety. That doesn’t stop there being a lot to take in initially though, but that adds to the feeling that this is a premium experience, rather than anything more flimsy.

There are a lot of currencies to consider, including a premium one you can buy with real money, but Puzzle Craft 2 doesn’t push this in your face. It’s reasonably stand-offish so you can still enjoy things without feeling forced to pay up.

As a sequel, it’s hard to fault Puzzle Craft 2. It builds on the success of its predecessor, easily proving to be really rather addictive.