A match 3 game with nice 3D graphics but not much else!

I’m sure you’ve played a lot of match 3 games already in the past, but have you played an actual 3D match game? Probably not. This game is quite the looker and it’s pretty challenging to boot.

Essentially, you get thrown a lot of junk on the table and you must look for three matching objects. This sounds a lot like traditional match 3, right? Well, in this game, your objects are not neatly arranged in tiles but, rather, they’re superimposed, just like how you would see an untidy room in real life. 

I may sound nitpicky here (as always) but this makes me wonder why it’s called “Tile Masters” because, well, as I just mentioned, you’re not really matching tiles, even though the game insists on calling the matching objects “tiles”. I’m not too convinced by that definition, but who cares?

Well, you will eventually play with more literal tiles, but even if that weren’t the case, the game could be called “Cyberpunk 2077” for all I care and it’d still be fun!

But, is it? Yeah, sort of. Apart from the normal matching game, you get to participate in special limited-time events and other assorted goodies, which is nice. 

However, there’s the eternal ads issue!

To be frank, they’re bad, but not insufferable! With some freemium games, you’d need the patience of a Hesychast monk in Mount Athos to not feel the burning urge to throw your mobile device out the window after all the stupid ads you get shown in the timescale of like 1 minute!

I would question why they need to show ads even if you win and don’t want to claim a reward (though in that case they can be skipped a bit “faster”). I understand and even applaud that devs give players the opportunity to play their games without charging them money upfront in exchange for a little (ha!) of their time. However, I reckon they can still tone down the ad fest a bit more as it is.

“Luckily” (yeah, the quotes are intentional), the game offers you the choice to pay in order to circumvent the ads. Unfortunately, you’d have to imburse a hefty fee of roughly $6 to play this game ad-free, which I think is not worth it. Heck, I wouldn’t pay two bucks for this game, but that’s just me and I digress.

For the record, having browsed through the reviews of this game on the Play Store, I noticed a lot of players complaining that the ads show even in the middle of the level. So far, I’ve not been punished with these mid-level ads, though I imagined that the guys at Higgs Studio had to balance the ad showing rate after the backlash they received.

Anyways, let’s focus a bit more on the positive aspects of this game. 

The first thing worth remarking is how hard the game gets as you advance. The first few levels made me feel like some kind of rocket science professor. I breezed through those levels as if they were nothing. However, as I moved on, I felt my Ph.D. status began to be called into question. For the first time, I could notice a timer at the top edge of the screen which I had not visualized before, letting me know time was my bane.

The game’s difficulty escalates quickly, but it’s not overly unbalanced. One of the most important things that you’ll have to look out for is the slots at the bottom. That’s because once you choose an object, you cannot deselect it, meaning that you have to strive to find the other two matching objects if you want to clear some slots and not fill all of them with unmatched objects. Doing that will make you lose the match.

Trust me, you will suffer trying to select the objects. Sometimes they can get so cluttered that you’ll find yourself selecting the wrong object more often than not.  Those with fat fingers, beware! Also, it wouldn’t hurt to thoroughly clean your hands, especially if your touchscreen is particularly sensitive.

Lastly, I must reprise my praise for the graphics in this game. The way the objects move around the playable area truly made me feel as if I was sorting real-life objects around my room to the point where I actually found myself genuinely looking for my Xbox controller under the pile of pizzas and hot dogs!

I ended this review on a positive note because, amidst its glaring faults, there are portions of Tile Master 3D that I find worth experiencing. Sure, it’s not the most original offering in the genre (the game is basically a rip-off of Match 3D, after all) but it’s fun and engaging, at least for a while. Definitely give this one a try!

 Have you become a Tile Master yet?  Let me know in the comments!