Basement Couch

All those colors are gonna be etched into your brain after playing this.

In the spirit of Bejeweled and Zoo Keeper, Dragon Portals is a puzzle game where you most colored things a single space in an attempt to match three or more colored things. In the spirit of iPhone reviews, I’m going to talk about it.

Let’s get the nitty gritty over with: Dragon Portals is fun. I’ve enjoyed it a lot. Whether playing it during long sessions while watching old Buffy the Vampire episodes or playing it during short bursts while waiting in the car to pick up someone. Dragon Portals can work with whatever amount of time I have to spare. So for the most part it really fits into my criteria for “THE PERFECT IPHONE GAME”. Furthermore, the gameplay is all achieved nicely through the touch screen and it is a game which is simple to understand but gets increasingly complex as the game progresses.

Now, there are some nit picky things I should really get out of the way here.

Firstly, the game has a plot. A puzzle game with a plot. Why? I don’t know. It really shouldn’t be like this. We have the technology for things NOT to be like this. What are we building schools for if we still have to have plots in our portable puzzle games?

Level names like "A Breath of Fire" are meaningless to the contents of the levels.

The plot is, surprise twist, about dragons. I could tell you more but I don’t want to spoil your experience/this review by going into it deeper. Fortunately, you only learn all this by playing the game’s story mode, which is a series of levels, each slightly more difficult than the last. It’s a nice way to encourage improvement from the player but the game could have done a better job to add variety. As it is, the story mode feels like a very lazily thrown together feature. But Dragon Portals forces you to play this feature if you want to unlock all the power ups.

In most modes you are able to pick three power ups. Some might just destroy “orbs” and collect points while others may save you in a tight spot when you’re about to fail. The game encourages you to try new combinations of powers and see what works best for you. The fact you have to complete 80 puzzles in the story mode before you have access to all the power ups is needlessly punishing the player. Content should be available. Not hidden.

As far as the gameplay goes, the goal is to gain enough points to allow the dragons to enter their portals. The dragons are constantly gliding downwards and only large bursts of points will give them some more altitude. If the dragons ever crash, you lose. There’s also a Survival Mode where you try to stay afloat for as long as possible and an Islands mode (which is the same thing).

You gain the necessary points by getting three or more of the same colored orbs in a row. The trick is, you are only capable of pulling orbs downward. It’s an interesting variation on the Bejeweled formula. There are also bonuses for creating strings of combos or for lining up orbs on two rows in the same move.

Power Ups allow for some explodey nonsense.

The more I played there better my eyes got at identifying areas I should focus on. I could really feel myself getting better at playing Dragon Portals. There’s a very nice sense of satisfaction behind this. This is because the game is mostly reactive. All you do is search for rows that will line up; make it happen. The game doesn’t allow for much more in the realm of strategy. So improvement comes in picking the best power ups for your play style and getting better at locating and identifying orbs to line up. I’m still getting better at it, but I like that I can say I DID get better.

Dragon Portals doesn’t do too much new with the Bejeweled formula but it does enough to keep the formula fresh. If you want a puzzle game on your iPhone that more eye power than brain power, Dragon Portals has my recommendation.