Once again I’m proudly here to throw some praise on the indie developers who simply dare to be different, mixing together styles of play and other elements that are unexpected. While we’ve seen classic Match 3-style puzzling integrated into the likes of an RPG and some other combinations, I can’t say that I’ve seen it used more as a mechanism in an adventure before. Given my love for mythology, when you then fold in characters and their classical stories to come up with something as unique as Mythmatch, you have my attention.

The best description I can come up with is that this is an adventure of sorts, where your primary means of accomplishing anything is through combining matching items which will then evolve into new forms. There are many different items, animals, and implements that you’ll unlock as you do this, ultimately taking simple combined items to make more complex ones, combining them, and so on. Sometimes you’ll need certain things for simple quests, sometimes what is created by a specific combination is extremely useful to you for helping you progress, but what’s nice is that for the most part you’re left to discover what you need to do, what’s valuable, and so experimentation and some patience are pretty well always in order. As you befriend and work with different mortals they’ll also lend a hand, and the better your relationships, the more assistance they’ll tend to provide.

The challenge though, is that I’m not convinced enough care was put into making the game more efficient with respect to your time. Picking up items one at a time to move to another location eats up more effort than it should, and simply trying to place something in the intended spot can be frustratingly difficult, in particular when you’ve got time pressures while trying to complete tasks to please the gods themselves. The included arcade mode simply isolates and further doubles down on the sloppiness of your movement and placement of the items you’re holding, which isn’t great. In the main story mode it’s still annoying periodically, but without the pressure of the puzzle-focused play where you’re working against an aggressive clock it’s at least more tolerable. If you don’t mind its limits this is at least a good effort, just be aware that it can be aggravating the more pressure is applied.