Match Village Switch Review

I’m starting to really enjoy games that can’t be boxed into a genre, and have been lucky to get some unique games to review in recent times that challenge my tastes as well as my brain. Continuing the trend of thinking outside the box, comes Match Village from Rising Moon Games and QUByte interactive. What’s it Like? No need to prepare your armies, start planning your layout and get building as we review Match Village on Nintendo Switch.

Match Village doesn’t give you a lot of direction to start, and you are simply dealt some tiles in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen to place wherever you see fit. This initial lack of direction may seem off-putting at first, but after a few turns, you start discovering the mechanics of the game. You need to build up a culmination score to be able to start a new expedition and build on a new island, carrying over your remaining tiles. It’s not easy at first, and you will learn to build the same type of building close together so they can merge into the next building in its chain, while also creating space to place more buildings.

Certain buildings should be built away from others to avoid a negative score, and thankfully, the game does give you an indicator of these penalties (or bonuses) before you place the building. If you incorrectly place something, there is a handy undo button that sacrifices the tile but saves the space you were placing it on which certainly comes in handy in later stages. Later stages bring more mechanics to the table with buildings on stilts, as well as the ability to expand the land with both wooden and grass platforms, allowing you a little more freedom to reach the target score. Those who reach the target score need to be cautious and make sure they have enough tiles to move to the next area, as I made the mistake of moving forward with only two tiles, instantly failing, and having to restart.

Graphically, the game is rather simple, although it doesn’t need to be flash. It mostly does a good enough job of building world immersion with a bright palette of greens and blues that contrast with the colours of the buildings. That being said, there are some buildings that can look similar, causing frustrating placement mistakes like the basic house and the workshop-style building which cost me a lot of combo issues due to the similarities. You do eventually get used to checking your tile stacks, but I wish they made the roof a different colour to make it easier to differentiate.

Despite its simplistic look, Match Village is quite fun to play and even while capturing this footage for the review, I found I lost a few hours trying to make it as far along as possible. It’s not without its frustrations however, as I did encounter a few frustrating bugs, mainly my cursor disappearing when moving the camera, forcing me to restart, or the camera not really being able to show where the building was as it rotates on a fixed axis, and on one occasion, I was unable to rotate the camera at all, thinking I had broken my controller. Even with these issues, I still had no problem pushing forward and playing to try to discover what else the game had in store for me.

For my vision-impaired city builders, there are no accessibility options, so further research might be required to see if Match Village is for you.

Matchi Village is a fun game that is great to help burn a few hours away on. For the asking price of less than $9 AUD, there’s enough gameplay and replayability to warrant a purchase. There are some frustrations however, as it could use a little bit of polish when it comes to the camera controls, but its simplistic, city-building fun counters these shortcomings with a relaxing puzzle game that’s sure to occupy your time until your next big game.

So, What’s It Like? Match City is like Islanders crossed with Bejewelled.

In the interest of full disclosure, A review copy was provided by the publisher, but this does not affect my score.