Elemental Connection

Pros: - Fun puzzle game that is easy to learn but more tricky to master. - Well designed UI with satisfying visual effects. - A large array of different game boards and rule settings, as well as different challenges that invite you to try them. I like that you're able to mix & match boards and rules to create whatever combination you're in the mood for. - You can choose between different colour groups for the tiles, which is useful for players with low vision or colourblindness. - There's an active Discord server where you can find some very friendly players willing to jump into a multiplayer game with you. - There's a cat background, which is an illustration of the dev's cat! <3 Cons: - It took me a while to figure out how to change my display name. The process is not very intuitive. - Controls can be a bit fiddly on SteamDeck. - For the price the content you get is very generous, but I do wish the game had a little more depth to it. After completing the challenges, I'm missing that spark to come back and play "just one more game".

It's fun, strategic, expressive, variative, colorful, and absolutely brutal. What are you waiting for, go on and play it NOW!

The most fun games are often the simplest! I'll report back to you once I've completed all the challenges and achievements. Update: I completed all the challenges and achievements... and then I kept playing some more.

Minimalist presentation, and simple gameplay. Easy to learn puzzler, and building mosaics is very satisfying. Very polished for the price, and even has head-to-head multiplayer.

The real beauty of the game starts to reveal itself when you think more deeply about the game rather than placing tiles randomly. This is especially true for puzzle mode; there are goals which appear hard to get, but with forward planning, you can surprise yourself with how high you can go. The sound and music design is also very good. A true gem of a game.

Very simple and straightforward game: basically you learn the rules at one glance if you didn't pick them up already from the video above, but still flexible enough to allow variation. It is basically a board game, but such a minimalist board game that it actually works better as computer game, with the point calculations automatised and some clear modifications on the boards and rules easily executed. And despite the minimalist game idea, it is certainly well developed with different board sizes and shapes, different levels of AI or a number of challenges to solve. It certainly counts as the hidden gem: not the most precious one but still a delight.