Troll Patrol Reviews

It's just a great game

Plays a lot different from what I expected. There is no "adventure" mode like in Puzzle Quest or 1000000/YMBAB. Still fun tho.

It's a nice twist on match 3 games, even works well on the steam deck with the touch screen.

It's a pretty good game to kill some time without turning off your brain completely. Works great on Linux too. Thumbs up!

This really scratches that Dungeon Raid itch. This game has better graphics and can be played on the PC, so those are definite pluses. I would absolutely recommend this game especially if you like games like Dungeon Raid.

[i]Dungeon Raid[/i] is dead for ages, fortunately now I have [i]Troll Patrol[/i]. Nice remaster on [i]the[/i] best match-3 game in the world.

Having put seven hours into the game, the amount of progress toward unlocking everything without any real increase in variety (character, boards, items, etc.) has led to monotony issues. I've played seven hours without a lot to show for it, and the game hasn't become more interesting or engaging. I enjoy matching games because I'm a fairly casual gamer, but I'm not wanting to put much more time into this one, which is a shame since I also like progressing in games. If you see it for a couple of dollars, then it's probably worth it, but I feel like I'd have to invest so many more hours to unlock the additional characters, weapons and other items without the game providing anything to keep my interest. It's a cool concept, but I doubt there will be any further updates or development on this one.

This is a game that is very heavily inspired by the mobile game "Dungeon Raid" (my personal favorite of all time tbh, rip 32-bit support), so if you know what I'm talking about you already know if you'll like the game or not. For complete newcomers (aka most of you), the game has a simple premise: match tiles and collect loot/do damage. It isn't the Bejeweled type of matching however; you draw a line between similar types of tiles and collect every tile the line goes through. You can continue the line in any direction as long as there's another tile that can be matched with it. It's not a very "puzzle-y" type of match 3, but a strangely compelling type. In terms of what your brain has to do, you can't completely zone out, but you can play effectively while paying attention to a movie or something on the side. Of course, you can focus entirely on the game as well, and that can lead to clever plays that make/break the run. The game has a roguelike structure, where you level up throughout a short run, and get permanent unlocks that show up in other runs. I personally think the acquisition of Tentacles (the main currency for unlocking new things) is on the slow side, but the unlockables aren't necessary to have a successful run so I don't mind it as much. My biggest gripe has to do with the unlockables that are gained through treasure chests, as they're random and sometimes you won't get what you need until much later on. As an example, the last two classes were locked for me due to requiring you to get certain items unlocked from the chests, but those two classes were the last things I unlocked due to the random order. Again, you don't really need the unlockables, and arguably the starting gear is the strongest apart from one or two pieces, but variety really helps in a game like this. As for cons, this game has very similar cons to its source inspiration. Truly "insane" runs require specific setups, and you won't get anywhere near them if you try to diverge due to some glaring (at least from what I can tell) balance issues. Notably, the active skill Treasure Hunter and passives that accelerate gold/armor/exp gain are the main culprits. Regardless of what build you try to go for, you *need* to accelerate the speed at which you level up you and your gear if you want to have any chance of keeping up with the enemies (especially if you go for hard mode at every option). And Treasure Hunter is almost a necessity as you can easily double or triple your gold gain throughout a run, and gold can be used to get all 3 of the juicy passives. To make matters worse, some of the permanent unlockables *also* boost gold gain, meaning that gold is the de facto resource to funnel as much as possible. Also, apart from some things being OP, some things are very UP as well. For one, many active skills simply pale in comparison to alternatives; usually the skills that do direct damage and skills that are overly situational. For upgrades, some are simply worse than others, either because of weak scaling or simply being inferior; sneak attack vs. base damage is a good example of this, as both are almost always offered at the same values and sneak attack only helps you for one turn vs. base damage's continuous value. You can argue that you need "weak" options to dilute the item/skill pool, but I'd rather buff the enemy's overall strength and make every option viable. Some of the enemies are clearly stronger than others as well, but I assume that this is intentional to an extent; the only suggestion I have on this point is making enemies that have stat-related abilities scale more effectively by making the abilities affect stats as a percent instead of a static +1, as when you end up fighting enemies that have double/triple digit stats, they basically have no ability. That being said, balance issues aside, the gameplay loop is *great*. Just like the game that inspired this, it's a game you can sit down and play for hours just because it's relatively simple but has room for creativity, and the constant upgrading/fighting/looting/matching feels great. Additionally, the presentation makes the game feel better to play too, as everything you do has a nice visual/audio effect associated with it that breaks up the otherwise bland (in a good way) screen. You can just get into a state of flow with how clean everything looks and feels. Also, the Steam version of this game has cross-save support with the mobile version, so you can take this game on the go where its casual but deep nature truly shines. Games tend to be fairly short (maybe 5-30 minutes or so?) although they can go on for a long time if you have an insane run (my longest is about 3 hours long!), but regardless, the game has a save and quit option so you're never going to lose a run because of time constraints. TL;DR look into the free (with ads) mobile version of this game and/or Dungeon Raid to get an idea of how the game works, and if you can get past a relatively slow progression system and the preview you got seemed to appeal to you, you'll enjoy the (great) gameplay loop that's very easy to learn and has a decently high skill ceiling, albeit a few balance issues that I'm sure will be ironed out.