Official Praise Thread

[x4000]

cc, you'd better believe we were jazzed about that particular review, also.  That's one of the reviewers that the staff most reads, for the reasons you mention, and we view him as a really fair broker.  So it was really great to hear what he had to say, especially given what he had to say. 

It's practically criminal that he's not considered by MetaCritic, but it's possible he simply just doesn't review enough of the mainstream games or something.  Ah, well.  And I say that not just because he reviewed us well on this one.

Many thanks for the congrats, the well wishes, and your enthusiasm for the game!

Chris

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, the Out of Eight review made me really happy.  He's been doing those reviews (on that website) since 2005 and if I'm counting right has done a total of 646 reviews, and Tidalis is the 29th game to earn the honor of an 8/8 score.  So if statistics mean anything that puts it in the top 4.5% of all games ever, right?

And Dominions 3 is an awesome game; really niche but really cool.  Of course, I've still only played the demo and read some LP's here, it's pretty expensive

[SmileyFace]

Just to chip in: What a high quality game! I'm very impressed.

I am maybe 15 or 20 levels in and really enjoying it so far. Even the cut scenes are fun and worth watching It's nice to see a game that doesn't take itself too seriously.

Gameplay wise, this is a gem. I think that calling it a "match 3" game doesn't do it justice, because the game is much deeper. In story mode at least, new mechanics are introduced at a good pace so there is always something new to learn or to revisit and master.

There are some minor issues (erratic difficulty & graphic glitches) but overall this feels like a very polished game. I haven't enjoyed a matching puzzle game this much since, hmm, Puzzle Quest? PQ was an innovative title, imo, yet I think I'm going to get even more play time and enjoyment out of Tidalis.

Good work!

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, lots of people are struggling with the term "match-3" on this title.  Arcen staff in particular   We (or at least Chris and myself) really hate to see the words "Tidalis" and "Match-3" put together like that because of the connotations of that sub-genre... but I can see why it's kind of unavoidable even for perfect-score reviews to call it that because, well, your basic starting point for making stuff happen is matching 3+ blocks of the same color   But it's so different because that's really just the basic starting point, and the variety of stuff you can do with that runs into the simply ludicrous quantities.

I don't think there's any one slogan that could "fit" the game (though James Allen might have been onto one), but "See?  Match Three Doesn't Have To Suck."  might be one; or rather that it can be awesome

[SmileyFace]

I thought it might be worthwhile to post some praise on the Steam forums, too:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1381551

Tried to cover everything I like about Tidalis.

[keith.lamothe]

Thanks for posting that, and I think you covered it pretty well considering the small space

[x4000]

Indeed, many thanks! We definitely needed something like that on the steam side.

[dumpsterKEEPER]

You might have already noticed, but you got a very nice writeup for Tidalis over on Dubious Quality: http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2010/07/tidalis.html

[keith.lamothe]

That is a very positive review, thanks

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Just linking my Blog Review Post.  http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/tidalis-1-0-review/

*Shameless plug is shameless*

King

[x4000]

No worries, we do appreciate it, actually.  It's linked from our main press page for Tidalis (and more recently in an overall news post), so I didn't link it here.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

No worries, we do appreciate it, actually.  It's linked from our main press page for Tidalis (and more recently in an overall news post), so I didn't link it here.

Yeah, I saw that last night.  ty  

King

[x4000]

Of course!

[Huw]

Huw and Admiral, it's been great to see you again, it's been a while.  Huw, I'm actually on holiday at the moment (took a week for right after Tidalis came out), but of course it's sort of a working holiday, as far as that sort of thing goes.

Heh.  You just can't leave things alone, eh?

As predicted, by the way, I put Tidalis in front of my girlfriend, and five minutes later I was buying a key.  So now we're both Arcen Games fan...er...people!  Any extra content you release for Tidalis will be snapped up.

[x4000]

Many thanks! And yeah, there is more free dlc coming for her. It was definitely a working vacation for me, my wife was a bit annoyed. But, we had a good time and I got what needed to be done, done, so all's well that ends well.