Caves and Castles: Underworld

A short but good match 3 with a twist! There's a barebones story, something about restoring the castle to it's former glory because the peasants all moved away. So they need money to build things and they get that by delving into the caves, where you play the match 3 games. There is also another currency, spirit or something like that, and that's used to buy special bonus things like remove 5 pieces in a cross formation anywhere you want on the board (useful for those things that you have to drop off the bottom of the board), and remix the board when you can't find any matches, and a red dragon that I never figured out what he did. You can also use spirit to make her run faster in the caves.

The caves start out simple but gradually get complex and bigger so that you can't see what's down a corridor or shaft. The goal is to get all the treasure before you find the exit. One time I took a wrong turn and ended up at the exit before I had gone everywhere. ANd there's no do-overs. You can't replay a level. You have one chance and that's it. Your character travels in a direction until she hits an obstacle (blocks, doors, etc.). At intersections there are arrows and you choose which direction you want to go. There are also animals to rescue by running into them. After you are done in the cave the animals frolic in the outdoors among the buildings you have built.

There's always some "quest" that you need to build something or do something and that costs a certain amount of money (gold coins). I call them "quests" because after you have purchased it and the graphic of it building something is done it says "Quest Completed!" When you do not have enough money to buy the "quests" then you click on "Go to the caves" and start a cave run. The cave layouts seem pre-made and not random but I don't know for sure. I also don't know how many there are but there must be enough in case a player misses some treasure chests and needs to do extra cave runs to get more money. Or you can get money by trading spirit. I had way too much spirit because I seldom used the bonus abilities but it's there for players who like to use the bonuses a lot.

I played a little over 4 hours actual playtime. Pretty short but it really didn't feel that way to me. Maybe because I played this game in short spurts instead of long time. So keep that in mind when deciding if you want to get the game or not. The background music is okay, not annoying even though it was repetitive, it just blended into the background in my mind while I was concentrating on the match 3 levels.

Really cute match-3 game. Nice concept with the dungeon crawling aspect. My only complaint is that it's not long enough. I hope there are more chapters to come!

While very short, it's still a good game to kill time. Maybe my one complaint would be the "not too great" responsiveness of the purely match-3 part (moving tiles with the mouse)

Hi, I bought Caves and Castles: underworld. I can't finish level 45. Is there a way to pass the door??? It seems there is no way to finish it.