Freview - Battle for Blood
Brought to us by YFC Games, Battle for Blood is basically Bejeweled Blitz with one major difference: it's fun. Each set of tiles you line up gives a certain number of soldiers with which to battle the hordes of the devil (who else?), and how many soldiers you get depending on how many tiles you line up. However, rather than working against a timer, you get a set number of moves per stage for three stages. Depending on your level of observational skill and luck, this can add a great deal of difficulty when you only have 5 soldiers fighting against 20 enemies.
YFC Gamestudio
The continued playability comes in the form of rpg-style upgrades for the different classes of soldiers you unlock over the course of the game. You start out with peasants, swordsmen and pike men, later unlock archers and keep upgrading from there. The pike men have the greatest attack strength starting out, the swordsmen have the best defense and the peasants are next to useless and never seen again once you have something to replace them. Items also play a role as temporary stat boosters and magic McGuffins that wipe everything on the field, to compensate if you have negligible ability to line up tiles. The upgrades and items are, of course, purchased via coins you collect from successful battles as well as lining up coin tiles in game. Then again, you can also purchase coins in-game with actual money if all that pesky gameplay is getting in the way of your fun.
Admittedly, as you get better at the game, it gets satisfying seeing your ever-increasing army of warriors mow down enemy after enemy like a tank rolling across a swarm of crickets. It also gets increasingly irritating when the game gives you hints for tile line-ups after a few idle seconds because FUCK YOU, GAME, I DON’T NEED YOUR HELP! Fortunately, these hints can be turned off in the options menu.
YFC Gamestudio
Later on, you find yourself having to juggle several different soldier types, balancing their stats and using combinations that won’t overburden your game board with too many different types of tiles. Too many and you can only line up three tiles (for a single soldier) at a time. The game makes you mix up the composition of your forces by limiting how many of a single unit you can deploy at once. You can’t just use one or two soldier types as that would break the game faster than shelling out $100 for coins. Interrupted boards also make for a strategic element with certain spaces blocked out that you then have to maneuver around.
YFC Gamestudio
Overall, this thing is Candy Crush with a tower defense (or in this case, offense) twist that actually lends itself to a bit of satisfying gameplay if you’re bored with either genre on its own. The artwork is reminiscent of Scribblenauts with its simplistic design and blocky movements that, while not incredibly impressive on its own, can be fun to watch when you’ve got 50 soldiers raging against the armies of darkness in a massive wave like a swarm of armor-clad, sword wielding locusts. Say, there’s an idea for a game…