Review: Legend Of Fae

From first sight, Legend of Fae had my interest. It’s a game in the same vein as Bejeweled or Puzzle Quest where you swap orbs around a box to make a column or a row of three matching orbs. So, nothing too revolutionary there then. It does, however, have something extra on top (literally). Is Endless Fluff’s first commercial game worth checking out?

The story plays out on top but your eyes will be glued to the orbs more often than not.

Above the box of orbs I mentioned earlier is the protagonist. Claudia is a young girl from the quiet haven of Sea Cross Island. She gets thrown on an adventure when her uncle disappears and leaves her with an old book, a box of mysterious orbs and an ominous letter. With no idea what’s going on, Claudia decides that the best course of action is to search for her missing uncle. On the way, she discovers that the orbs are magical, and soon she has four new friends; one elemental each for water, fire, earth and wind. Then she learns why. Magical creatures known as Fae are appearing and wreaking havoc all over the island. Coincidentally, many of them seem to have a nasty allergy to one of the four elementals. Who’d have guessed it? With the story playing out on top, your job is to keep it going. For instance, gathering three purple orbs powers up your walk meter when you’re outside of battle and gathering one of the red, yellow, blue or green orbs increases the mana for the corresponding elemental. Fill any of them up and you’ll start walking or your elemental will be ready for use.

This small island is the hub for your adventure.

Basically, the idea is that you prioritise what orbs you’re matching to continue to play out the story on top. This will mostly involve gathering the purple orbs to continue walking until you hit an event or a battle. Once in a battle, you switch to using the top portion of the screen to attack the monsters with your elementals and you continue to switch between the box of orbs (Gather Mode) and the battle above as you power up and attack, rinse and repeat. Does that sound complicated? Well, it’s not. Once you’ve made it through the first few stages, you’ll have the basics down pat. It’s actually quite enjoyable to play with these extra layers. Games like Bejeweled (or going right back, Columns) scratch some compulsive itch buried deep within us to match things together but they’re not the most exciting games in the world so it can be hard to keep your attention beyond a short play. Legend of Fae succeeds at grabbing your attention and it doesn’t let go until the end.

Fred the Fire Elemental unblocks the path.

Legend of Fae is a puzzle game to remember. It’s charming and provides plenty of fun for all the family with 50 different stages, a  loveable art style and a well-told story that younger gamers are sure to enjoy. Not everything is perfect with Legend of Fae, however. There are no graphics options available for the game, and while that’s par for the course for an indie game, it would be nice if the game scaled to fullscreen better than it does. There are also a few spelling mistakes in the dialogue here and there. They are rare but in a game that relies so heavily on text to tell its story, more care in proofreading would be appreciated.

Legend of Fae tells a story that even younger gamers should have no problem understanding.

All things considered, if you’re looking for a fun puzzle game that goes a step further, Legend of Fae is an excellent choice.

Developer: Endless Fluff

Genre: Puzzle Game

Time: Around 10 hours

Gripes: Doesn’t scale well in fullscreen, a few spelling mistakes.

Get it for the: Twist on the genre, the charming story and characters.

Full Disclosure: Press X or Die received a review code from the developers.

By Declan Murphy

His dream is to one day have an entire room as a dedicated games library, wowing friends and scaring away potential wives.