[Forgotten Games] BeVampired: The Diaries of a Vampire Slayer

App Store (Free)
© Lunagames International B.V.

The first “forgotten game” to be reviewed is this old (released in Sept. 2011) match-3 game that I actually liked, played for several hours until 38th level, and got an inspiration for several my projects. The name is a pre-Halloween parody of the Bejeweled hit, of course. Lunagames also published its clone BeZombied. We all like games about vampires, zombies, and birds, don’t we?

However, the match-3 mechanics is a bit different. Yes, you can switch places of two elements (the parts of a vampire’s body) and match same elements in a row to remove them. But switching can also lead to a construction of a vampire: a pity one without hands, a happier guy with only one hand, or a fully healthy vampire with two hands. According to the game story, it actually represents killing of a vampire but who cares about the story in match-3 game? In place of a killed/resurrected vampire, the player gets a special element (“power-up”) that allows to remove more standard elements. The goal of each level is to remove a certain number of elements of each kind (each level adds +5 to the goal) in a limited number of moves (20). What’s brilliant about those special elements is that they don’t take moves to be played. Moreover, unplayed elements are transferred to the next level. Creation of a vampire doesn’t subtract number of moves either. A careful strategy of building more and more vampires presents you a simple and pensive gameplay, exactly what I like in such games.

The only confusing thing was a long explanation how to play in the very beginning. It’s always hard to get all peculiarities of rules before you started playing and saw the first screen. I welcome instructions and tutorials but please don’t give me five screens of the text before I even made a first move. Interstitial screen ads are OK. Perhaps, I should try them in one of my games instead of banner ads.

You may wonder how forgotten the BeVampired game is. It was rated dozens of times and commented by users, got a couple of reviews – obviously more buzz than my first game has generated. But check App Annie analytics, for example, to see that today it’s out of all major markets on the App Store. This is the fate of 99% of apps. It’s perfectly normal to become forgotten. It doesn’t mean automatically that the game is unplayable or unenjoyable. Nevertheless, match-3 mechanics appeals deeply to the human’s nature and multiple generations of gamers continue switch and match gems, vampire parts, candies, etc.