Ecchi Crush (PS4) Review

 

Ecchi Crush is a Match 3 Game with a picture unlocking twist from Yabai Games, who are also the developers of ‘Ecchi Secrets’ (a Qix clone, similar to Xposed Reloaded and Celebrities/Cuties Hacked) and many other Ecchi Games on Nintendo Switch. They recently also released the picture puzzle game ‘Splash of Color’ (which I have recently reviewed).

Ecchi Crush mostly plays like a classic Match 3 Game. In case you don’t know what that is: You have a board of randomly positioned coloured gems and you can alter the position of one Gem per round upwards, downwards or sideways. If at least 3 gems are connected either sideways or upwards, then they combine and give the player points. The remaining gems will fall down in their place. Cross combinations are not possible. The idea is to form as many and as powerful combinations as possible with the least amount of turns. If you combine, for example, 4 gems in a row instead of 3, then you will get a Super Gem, that upon its next combination can destroy an entire row horizontally or vertically. The most famous Match 3 game is ‘Candy Crush’, which has unleashed a wave of hundreds of clone games, that have released since.

The twist of Ecchi Crush is that you don’t play for a high score, but instead you try to unveil a background image during the course of the match. Every gem position needs to be included at least once in a combination to unlock the image. That background image is part of a larger picture. You need to unlock a couple of these background images to unlock one bigger picture.

As the ‘Ecchi’ name implies, the game features pictures of anime women, which were AI generated, like a lot of F2P Puzzle Games do. As always, whether this affects your enjoyment of the game is up to personal preference.

The base game of Ecchi Crush only contains a single bigger picture on the easiest difficulty. You can buy an additional 2 hard and 4 medium pictures for 2,50 Dollars each. They are also available in a Complete Edition for 14 Dollars, which only saves 1 Dollar and isn’t even really complete. There is an additional 8^th picture only available for owners of the Ecchi Crush and Cyberage Complete Editions bundle or the Ecchi Crush and Ecchi Secrets Complete Editions bundle for 25 and 30 Dollars respectively. I would never consider buying any of that stuff, but that is certainly a nasty move by Yabai Games.

Ecchi Crush features a pretty easy Trophy list, including 1 Platinum and 11 Gold Trophies. The only trophy that doesn’t practically unlock itself is that for finishing a match in under 2 minutes, but it should unlock after a few tries as well. For Trophy Hunters the game can therefore be strongly recommended.

 

Result:

Ecchi Crush is an okay Match 3 Game, which severely lacks in content in the base game. Once you unlock the bigger puzzle picture, there isn’t much replay value besides playing the same one over and over again. Unlocking a background image is the only interesting or halfway unique element of the game, otherwise Ecchi Crush is as basic of a Match 3 game as it gets.

 

4.5/10

Splash of Color (PS4) Review

 

Another week, another F2P Puzzle Game arrives in the Playstation Store. Splash of Color is a game by Yabai Games, who recently also published Ecchi Crush (a Match 3 Game) and Ecchi Secrets (a Qix Clone).

Splash of Color, however, has a little bit of a twist. It is neither your classic Picture Puzzle Game, like HIQ Ace or AAA Dynamic Scenes for example, where you simply put one of a handful of picture pieces in the right spots, nor is it a Slide Puzzle Game, like Avatar Island or Slide N’ Go, where you have to rotate picture pieces till they are all in the right order. In Splash of Color you have to switch places between any 2 picture pieces till they are all in the right place, no rotation necessary. It seems like a mix of both and therefore makes Splash of Color stand out a bit from the other Puzzle Games.

The upside is that it is less headache-inducing than the sometimes quite complex slide puzzles. The downside, however, is also that it removes a lot of the challenge and can be solved quite easily. You are unlikely to take more than a few minutes even for the bigger pictures, which can of course harm the replay value and longevity of the game.

Splash of Color features 8 pictures for free, which is a bit more than average for F2P Puzzle Games. Like a lot of other Picture Puzzle Games on the Playstation Store, it seemingly used AI to design or at least help in the creation of the puzzle images. For some users, this might be a dealbreaker, but it is ultimately up to personal preference, if it affects you.

An additional 11 DLC packs with pictures can be bought for 2 Euro each. Alternatively, you could get the ‘wonderful edition’ for 9 Euro, which features 80 paid pictures, or the ‘complete edition’ for 20 Euro, which grants you access to 176 extra pictures. 

Splash of Color features a quick and easy trophy list, including a Platinum Trophy and 11 Gold Trophies. The game can be highly recommended for Trophy Hunters.

 

Result:

Splash of Color offers a unique take on the Puzzle Picture genre. It plays a lot like the rotation based Puzzle Picture games, but without the need for an actual rotation. While it might therefore not be as challenging, it is a more relaxing experience instead. That being said, you’re unlikely to play it for more than a few minutes. It’s a totally fine experience for what it offers, but nothing special in the grand scheme of things.

 

6/10

Diamond Painting ASMR (PS4) Review

 

Diamond Painting ASMR is, as the name suggests, a Diamond Painting Videogame. It is part of the seemingly endless wave of F2P Games by Qubic Games, who, after the Nintendo Switch, are now also invading the Playstation Store.

Diamond Painting in real life is mostly a mix of painting by numbers, but with stitches. There are no real diamonds being used, but instead small colored stones are being put into a position to later on create one big picture.

The game recreates this pretty faithfully, but it doesn’t do anything with it. You don’t get to choose which coloured stones you want to place and where. The game just auto-selects everything for you. It chooses the colours and tells you exactly where you are allowed to place them by big blinking numbers. You can switch up the order of the colours you place, but that ultimately doesn’t change anything. You don’t even get to press a button. You just hover the analogstick over the blinking positions and the diamonds place themselves. This becomes really boring after a few minutes.

The only thing the player really gets to decide is, if he wants to place 1, or 3 horizontal or 3 vertical diamonds at a time. This however is also pointless since the registration for the 3 diamond blocks usually took much longer time than just quickly placing solo diamonds. Everything but the single diamond is in most situations senseless, unless you actively want to waste time. The registration for single diamonds is also not always perfect. You sometimes think you hit the right spot, but you than have to backtrack because the game didn’t register it.

Another game from Qubic Games called Coloring Book also is a painting videogame. It’s by no means a great game, but it at least allows you to choose your own colours and where you want to place them. You can see how the ideal picture would look like, but than you actually get to play and make your own choices. In Diamond Painting the game isn’t just holding your hand, but moving every of your fingers and you just get to decide whether you obey or quit the game. The complete lack of freedom makes a big difference.

There are apparently over 900 different pictures in 16 categories available on Diamond Painting. All of them are technically available for free, but the game is gatekeeping you. Pictures require the use of 1-5 stars to play and you only get 1/5 stars regenerated every hour, so that your playtime is totally gatekeeped. You can of course pay real money to get more stars so you can play all the time… A pretty pathetic system, which thankfully can be outsmarted. If you just move the system clock of your Playstation 5 hours ahead, you will regain your 5 stars and you can repeat this infinitely. A game, that doesn’t respect you or your time, certainly doesn’t deserve your respect either.

Diamond Painting features 20 Playstation Trophies including 1 Platinum. Trophies are all super easy to unlock, but the repetitive and unexciting gameplay will quickly get very boring. The Platinum should take around 3-4 hours to unlock.

 

Result:

Diamond Painting ASMR is not shovelware or as bad as the the abysmal Real Cake Maker, but it is still a bad game. The game may be a faithful recreation of the Diamond Painting activity, but that just doesn’t translate well into a videogame. Diamond Painting pretty much plays itself and gets boring very quickly.

 

3/10