Gem Hunter Match

Only 3 levels, takes literally 5 min to complete, and the game is 1GB...

This game sucks. Only 3 levels, and the mouse is laggy But it does run on Linux, so there's that.

I didn't know that Steam publishes school exercises. This exercise is well made but the claim you'll finish the game in 5 minutes is exaggerated. You'll finish in 1 minute. Just a demo of three very quick levels that don't even follow each other but sit next to each other. Since the author succeeded, it looks well and is playable very well too, I don't understand why s/he never made the game. There's demand for such games. There's one technical issue though - the game doesn't have fullscreen mode and Windows do not recognize it as window either. Result - I cannot see the control panel, it's hidden behind the Windows control panel and I can't shrink it or move it anywhere so dear developer, when you create something next time, this is the first thing to make sure it works - then focus on settings, window mode and fullscreen mode. Then you can do anything else.

Gem Hunter Match is a very straightforward match three puzzle game, but I think the underwater setting gives it a little more personality than a completely standard gem matching game. I am diving through an ocean themed world, matching colourful gems and working towards uncovering treasures. The basic idea is immediately familiar, so I did not need much time to understand what I was supposed to be doing. The actual matching is simple and works how I would expect. I swap gems to create groups and clear them from the board, with larger matches giving me better opportunities to clear more of the board at once. I like this kind of gameplay when I want something relaxing because I can pick it up without having to learn complicated controls. The underwater presentation also makes the boards feel a little nicer to look at than a completely plain match three layout. The biggest strength for me is how accessible everything is. There is no complicated story to follow and no difficult control scheme to learn. I can start playing almost immediately and focus on finding good matches. The game is also single player and free to play, so it is easy to jump in for a short session without having t…

It started in windowed mode and didn't scale to my resolution so the bottom powerups were half cut off, I also couldn't see an option for "options" but looking at the screenshots on steam, that's because it was cut off by my Win11 taskbar. That's okay though because I didn't need them for such a short game (demo) [it's a demo, let's call it what it is]. Your level designs are cute but also not scaled properly, if you're going to have a top & bottom border, the playable area should not be cut off by these features. The 3d water effect is not good for my motion sickness, none of the weirdly polished 3D effects are. I know the trailer only shows 3 levels, but I was expecting to unlock more... that assumption was my mistake. Style over substance. Do not bother playing this. Bonus storytime, not related to the game review but I had extra thoughts about the game concept: Reminds me of the type of thing I would have made for my university coursework to show my lecturer I listened to the lesson. except we kept that inside the university on a private server. You get a pass/"good" score but you should have aimed for a distinction before you uploaded it to steam for other people to p…