When this title was handed to me to review, I was pretty pumped. Just glancing at the product description, the game is touted as being a puzzle/RPG hybrid. So in my head, I'm like "Hey, that sounds like Puzzle Quest! I don't totally hate Puzzle Quest if it's the first game!" This lead to me to watch a video of the gameplay. At first, I thought I was watching a knock off of Square Enix's Final Fantasy Theatrhythm. Then the solid colors of Dungeon's Hearts puzzle pieces came rolling down this moving invisible conveyor belt towards the brightly colored heroes and an awesome musical track playing in the background. It was at this moment I realized I was going to like this game. However, it was not at this moment that I realized the game was going to kick my butt. That came painfully later.

So it's a puzzle game. Big deal.

It is a big deal! This puzzle game has awesome features that you probably have not seen in a "match 3" game before! To start, each row on the Fatestream - the term for the game uses for the invisible moving conveyor belt I talking about earlier - is occupied by one of 4 heroes. You have the fighter archetype Brand, the mage archetype Jin, the healer archetype August, and the archer archetype TeLina. Each has their own special abilities that you gain access to by leveling them up through a separate mini-game that you play after you beat each enemy. For example, the fighter can use his first ability to do a multi-hit attack that deals more damage if you click your mouse as each blow lands. The healer August can use an ability to resurrect fallen heroes. Giving the heroes unique abilities is a nice way to allow the player to use more strategy when playing the mini-game to level them up. My poor archer was usually the last to level in my priority chain due to her abilities (something we'll talk about a bit farther down in the review).

The second quality that sets this game apart is your pieces are always rapidly moving toward your heroes. The premise for Dungeons Hearts is simple: match 3 like-colored chargers (moveable circle pieces or stationary square pieces) to make an attack striker of that color. You use these strikers to attack enemy strikers before they can reach your heroes at the end of the screen. That's the basic premise. It's simple enough to understand, but to master is an entirely different story.

You have the ability to move any piece around on the Fatestream. There is a catch to this, though. The only exception to this rule is that any square piece - be it hero or enemy in nature - is forever stationary. Also, should a piece make its way to the end of the Fatestream, that piece is either gone or, in the case of enemy and hex pieces, will hurt your heroes in some way. Even on normal difficulty, the Fatestream's scrolling speed combined with square pieces and special pieces (like armored enemy strikers, which take multiple hits to destroy) are no joke. The different types of pieces combined with the Fatestream speed make for frantic for some hectic good time puzzle playing, to an extent.

And a quick thumbs up has to be given to the team for the art direction and music. The art style is wonderful and slightly cartoony and the music I've heard has been top notch and very fitting for a standard RPG outing

Let's go slay some monsters with our brains in this perfect game!

Hold it! I didn't say that was perfect. Yes, this game is a blast to play. However, it's not without some flaws that bring the fun down a bit. There's one major problem that is most likely specific to the PC version (the copy I had to review) that is extremely frustrating. The fact of the matter is this game feels like it was designed to be played on touchscreen devices. And, of course, this game *is* available on one of those devices - the iPad. It's just that the translation to PC was not the most clean. You can really see this in the hero abilities. Often times you are required to press a tiny button on screen to do whatever you need to do to use your ability once it's been activated. August's first ability is a health restore spell that requires you to mash the colored button that corresponds with each hero. Sounds perfect for your finger and a touch screen but less than okay for someone using a mouse. Another ability severely hampered by the PC controls is TeLina's first ability. It requires you to click and swipe your mouse over and over trying to hit a target. It's clunky at best with the mouse, but I could see that being just fine for an iPad.

I consider myself not too bad at puzzle games and action games and anything that isn't an RTS, but the difficulty ramps up quick in Dungeon Hearts, even on Normal. Setting up combos and moving pieces around should not feel overwhelming before you even get to a first boss. There's ways to avoid this a bit by constantly trying to form an all 4 hero striker combos, but the farther in the game you get, the less likely you can create these without sacrificing some damage to your team.

While only slightly in the negative column, there's something that doesn't feel quite complete about this game. The art and animation style is charming, but you feel like the overall picture you see on screen is lacking something, giving it a slightly lifeless feel. The music is wonderful, but because of random bouts of silence at weird times (like the start up screen), you start to wonder if maybe your install went wrong and some of the sound files are missing. Also, let's be real: not a lot of people are going to care about the story. From what I've seen while playing, most of it is hidden behind information found on the Beastiary section of the main menu. That's also where you learn about what your abilities do for each hero, so that was a bit annoying as well.

Save the land or your wallet?

Though it may feel incomplete, the game is extremely enjoyable and I would definitely recommend purchasing it if this style of puzzle game appeals to you. If you aren't sure if you'll like it, it's just $3.00 on Steam and you didn't really need that double chocolate chip frappucino today anyway. Just know that it's a great twist on the overdone "match 3" style games and has a certain charm that makes you want to keep fighting the hordes of monsters.

Price: $2.99 on Steam, (also available on iPad for $.99)
Version Reviewed: PC
Acquisition Method: Promo code provided by publisher