Diamond Delight

Diamonds are a girl’s best friend...

There have been quite a few attempts at making a perfect logic and puzzle game and for quite some time there’s been very few challenges on the Bejewelled crown... that is until Diamond Delight appeared on the scene.

As nearly everyone out there probably knows, the way you play this game is through rotating adjacent squares to make a chain of three or more similar stones. Diamond Delight gives you two variations on the theme. The first is in ‘normal’ mode, where you must make as many chains to fill up the bar at the bottom of the screen to progress to the next stage. The second is where you oppose the clock. Whilst you play the game, the time you have to play runs down but with every chain of gems you make, you will refill the clock a little bit. If you manage to score enough chains and fill up the time bar, you’ll get to progress to the next level.

In either case you get to pick which theme you’d like to play, of course diamond related. For example, uncut diamonds are all clear diamonds in a variety of natural shapes; cut diamonds in various shapes and colours and jewellery.

The moves are controlled by simply pressing the up/down/left/right and OK button to select the diamond of your choice. Once you’ve picked your gem, you pick the adjacent square for it to rotate with (again by using the d-pad or keypad). If you pick the right gem to swap with, the chain of stones will clear and the column(s) will fall down and be filled with another pile of stones. If however you pick the wrong stone to rotate with, the stones will simply rotate back again – costing you time (which isn’t good news when you’re versus the clock!).

 This game is simplicity in itself, the moves are direct and effective and the game proves significantly addictive – which is exactly what you look for in a game. The only drawback I honestly experienced from being glued to the screen for so long, was that it meant that I couldn’t put it down once I’d started and my score had to be bettered each time.

A nice touch for those of you who get a little snow-blind from all the diamonds on the screen which despite your best efforts never seem to go away, is that if you do manage to lose sight of your next available move, a little arrow will highlight the stone. Although this may upset some of you, it’s best to still keep your eyes peeled for potential better moves.

Overall then, this game is certainly worthy of contending with its better known counterpart, the difference in appearances does offer some diversity. The only thing that this game does lack is a clear sense of true difficulty. For me, I found that the clock I was running against was little more than a mild inconvenience, and given a few moves I’d managed to get to the next level. Likewise, the normal mode wouldn’t get terribly challenging as the levels rose higher. But, if distraction and thumb-twitching is something you can’t get enough of, this will certainly keep you playing for hours.

Rating 78%

Positives

Highly addictive

Clear graphics

Good controls

Negatives

Very repetitive

Little challenge presented by running up against the clock or in normal mode

No quick game mode